On the night of Monday March 11 to Tuesday March 12, an SNCF maintenance worker died when struck by a freight train at Dijon station. The man, aged 33, was with another agent, who was injured and hospitalized, firefighters said, without specifying the latter’s state of health.
The public prosecutor in Dijon, Olivier Caracotch, confirmed to Agence France-Presse the opening of an investigation for “involuntary homicide and involuntary injuries in the context of work”, entrusted to the Interdepartmental Directorate of the National Police from Côte-d’Or. An internal investigation was also opened by the railway company.
Four other shocked people, witnesses to the accident, including a 39-year-old woman, and three men aged 31, 24 and 21, were treated, in particular by a medical-psychological emergency unit, according to the firefighters.
Sud-Rail warns about “working conditions”
In a message broadcast onthe Minister Delegate in charge of Transport, Patrice Vergriete, presented his “deepest condolences to his family and colleagues”.
For its part, the SUD-Rail union recalled after this tragedy that it had “ sounded the alarm with the CEO of SNCF [Jean-Pierre Farandou] in a letter dated August 4, 2023”. The union had alerted “the working conditions of SNCF Réseau agents [qui] were dangerously deteriorating due to lack of personnel and production deadlines imposed by the company’s management.
SUD-Rail underlines that this is the second death of a railway worker “to work in a week” after the death, on March 6, of a 40-year-old maintenance worker in a work accident at the industrial technicentre in Bischheim, in Alsace.