The driver of the school bus hit by a TER at the Millas level crossing in the Pyrénées-Orientales in December 2017, an accident which caused the death of six children, was sentenced on Friday to five years in prison, four of which were suspended. The lawyers of Nadine Oliveira, 53, tried for “involuntary homicides and injuries”, had requested the release of their client, hospitalized since September 22 and absent at the delivery of the judgment on Friday.
The year in prison will be executed by the defendant under the regime of home imprisonment, under electronic surveillance, said the president of the Marseille criminal court, Céline Ballerini. This firm year was decided by the magistrate “to take into account the punitive dimension” that the sentence must include because of the “irreversible consequences” of the alleged facts, she explained, rendering her judgment in the trial room. outside the standards of the judicial court of Marseille, the only city with Paris to host a center specializing in collective accidents.
“Behaviour not adapted to the circumstances”
This “accident originated from a fault that was certainly serious but inattentive, an involuntary fault”, added Céline Ballerini, according to whom Nadine Oliveira had “behaviour not adapted to the circumstances”, resulting in “particularly sharp and lasting suffering” for “the village of Saint-Feliù-d’Avall and beyond that a whole region”.
The court also decided to cancel Nadine Oliveira’s driving licenses, with a ban on returning them for five years. Similarly, he is now “definitively” prohibited from exercising any function in the field of transport. As during the trial, from September 19 to October 5 in Marseille, the judgment was broadcast live Friday at the Perpignan courthouse, in front of almost all the civil parties, only seven of them having made the trip to the city. Marseille.
The sentence pronounced is in accordance with the requisitions of the prosecutor Michel Sastre. In a balanced indictment, he recalled that “lives of children have been taken away, (…) families destroyed”, and that for the victims it is indeed “perpetuity” which has been inflicted on them. The collision between the school bus driven by Nadine Oliveira and a TER, on December 14, 2017, at the Millas level crossing, caused the death of six children aged 11 to 13 and injured 17 others, eight of them seriously.
A “black hole” at the time of the accident
Before the tragedy, Nadine Oliveira had taken this level crossing N.25 almost 400 times, and she had never seen it closed. During the investigation as at the hearing, she always maintained that the barriers were open on the day of the tragedy, despite the expertise and certain testimonies, in particular that of a young girl seated at the front of the bus.
She also spoke of a “black hole” at the time of the accident. At the hearing, one of the young victims, now almost of age and who lost a leg in the accident, had estimated that for her “the driver (was) already dead”: she is “imprisoned in herself” , she had launched, through the voice of her lawyer.