The passion of this octogenarian for machines of war was known to those around him. Warned about the dangerousness of his “collection”, this resident of Transloy, in Pas-de-Calais, nevertheless refused to put an end to it. Saturday, January 29, he lost his life in the explosion of a shell he was handling.
The firefighters were called by the neighbors, themselves alerted by the detonation. According to information from France 3, the noise was heard more than a hundred meters around. When they arrived rue des Baudets, the emergency services found the victim, aged 81, in cardio-respiratory arrest. They couldn’t save her.
“The primer is gone”
Daniel Dhouailly, the mayor of Transloy, also went there. He explains that at the time of the explosion, the octogenarian “was in the process of dismantling what is called around here a cafu, that is to say a headless shell”. These machines are equipped, at their base, with a “copper ring” that the man was probably trying to recover.
“He tried to separate it with a chisel, with a chainsaw. But he must have gone too far and touched what he shouldn’t have… The bait is gone… and that’s it, ”says the city councilor. It is dangerous and forbidden to handle this kind of war machine but, according to Daniel Douhailly, the victim had been doing it for “more than 20 years”.
By passion, but also for the money: the octogenarian used to resell the copper rings found on the shells. Aware of the risks, his son had asked him to stop this practice on several occasions. In vain.
“More than thirty” other explosive devices were discovered at the victim’s home, stored in his yard. Called by the gendarmes, deminers were dispatched to the site to take charge of this stock. Two neighbors were evacuated during the operation and a security perimeter was set up around the house.