The comedian Pierre Palmade was placed in police custody on Wednesday, following the serious road accident he caused last Friday in Seine-et-Marne under the influence of cocaine, told AFP the prosecutor of Melun, Jean-Michel Bourlès. “Mr. Palmade was taken into custody at 1:55 p.m.,” said Jean-Michel Bourlès without specifying the place of his custody. This accident left three seriously injured: a 27-year-old pregnant woman who lost her baby, a 38-year-old man and a 6-year-old child.
The circumstances of the accident still undetermined
According to the first elements of the investigation communicated by the magistrate, the vehicle driven by Pierre Palmade, who had consumed cocaine, struck Friday around 7 p.m. near Villiers-en-Bière, in the south of Seine-et- Marne, for an as yet undetermined reason, a vehicle coming in front. The 54-year-old comedian and the three occupants of the other vehicle, a man, his 6-year-old child and his sister-in-law, who lost her baby, were seriously injured.
The Melun public prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation for homicide and unintentional injuries resulting in total incapacity for work for more than three months, by driver under the influence of narcotics.
The second passenger is about to surrender
In the morning, one of the two men suspected of having fled from Pierre Palmade’s car after the accident was taken into custody and the second should soon surrender to the investigators, according to police sources and close to the file. The first, a 33-year-old Moroccan unknown to the police, was arrested at dawn at the home of a woman who lodged him in Clichy-la-Garenne in the Hauts-de-Seine. His host was also arrested.
The lawyer for the other man, who identifies himself as the second fleeing passenger, called investigators to say his client was going to surrender. Witnesses to the crash said two men fled after the collision. According to these witnesses, the two men were in their twenties. On Monday, the spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior, Camille Chaize, had asked them to “surrender” to “explain the facts”.
Understand the reasons for the escape of the two passengers
Their hearings must allow the investigators to understand the reasons for their flight and what they did after the accident, while the search of the home of Pierre Palmade, in Cély-en-Bière in Seine-et-Marne, did not did not permit the seizure of narcotics. “Why did this individual flee the scene of the accident when three individuals were in absolute danger? Was it to hide evidence, drugs?” Asked BFMTV Mourad Battikh, the victims’ lawyer, after the arrest of the first suspect in Clichy. The two men will also be questioned about the circumstances of the accident and the hours that preceded it.
Wednesday morning, two of the three victims of the accident “were still in intensive care”, according to their lawyer Me Mourad Battikh. The driver “underwent seven operations” while his son, “disfigured”, “is fed by a probe”, detailed the lawyer. The third victim, a 27-year-old woman, the driver’s sister-in-law, was expecting “her first child”, “a little girl”, whom she lost. The latter was visiting “her in-laws in Villiers-en-Bière”, according to Me Battikh.
Pierre Palmade, also injured in the accident, was hospitalized at the Kremlin-Bicêtre. He expressed his “shame” and is ready to assume “the consequences of his actions”, his sister Hélène Palmade said in a statement on Tuesday. Pierre Palmade was sentenced in 1995 for cocaine consumption. In 2019, he was taken into custody for use and acquisition of narcotics after being falsely accused of rape.