Threatening messages, a rejected lover and a young girl cut down on the side of the road. The Eva Puddu affair raised many questions. Did the love triangle at the heart of the investigation really end in murder?
On December 7, 2016, in Izon, a small Gironde town bordered by the Dordogne, Eva Puddu, an 18-year-old girl, is hit by a car as she walks quietly down the street while phoning her lover, Vincent. At the wheel of the vehicle, Jérémy Delaveau, a young volunteer firefighter, does not approach the body thrown about ten meters from the point of impact. A lack of reaction which will question justice all the more as the accused has been trained in first aid. The scheme becomes more complicated when we learn that Jeremy killed the girlfriend of a young man he himself was in love with. Many incriminating clues suggest that it is a murder: absence of brake marks, threatening messages sent for several days, etc.
“The more Vincent became indifferent to your suicide threatsthe more you raised the pressure“, notes Me Arnaud Dupin, one of the lawyers for the civil parties during the trial five years later. The accused, 22, did not even have a word of apology for Eva Puddu’s family. I can’t ask forgiveness for something unforgivable“, he justifies. On the fourth day of his trial before the Gironde Assize Court, Jérémy Delaveau firmly supports the thesis of the accident. “Of course, it seems too big to be an accident, given the context, the triangle Vincent, Eva and me. But it’s an accident. I never wanted to kill Eva“, assures the young man. After recalling the facts, one of the first firefighters to arrive on the scene then evokes the macabre discovery of the lifeless body ofEva, “all broken inside“.
Why didn’t Jérémy Delaveau help Eva Puddu?
“My legs couldn’t carry me to her, responds Jérémy Delaveau tit for tat. In shock, it can happen. I saw it in reports.” Yet there is this call made to Vincent a few minutes before calling the emergency services: “Do you know what I did? She died, I killed her“. One “automatism“, according to the defendant.”Then, just afterwards, to an Samu operator, you say that you knowingly hit Eva. If it’s an accident, why say that?“, then asks the president. Jérémy Delaveau does not avoid the difficult question: “At that time, I was bad. So I blame myself.“On December 7 after the accident, the volunteer firefighter already knows his fate.”I will spend the rest of my life in prison“, he would have confided to a rescuer. The thesis of the accident does not hold up in the eyes of justice. Convicted of murder, Jérémy Delaveau is serving today a 20-year prison sentence accompanied by a 3-year socio-judicial follow-up.