Toulouse. The van plunges into the Canal du Midi… It had been stolen after an accident
By Quentin Marais
Published on
2022 had only started four days ago, and yet it already seemed to have delivered one of the most incongruous images of the year: a van had been spotted in the middle of the Canal du Midi, in Toulouse, with no driver or passenger on board. Two months later, the investigation cleared up the case.
An accident…
A few days after this unusual image, “a complaint had been filed by a 33-year-old man who had been issued two days of ITT. An investigation had been opened,” said a police source. It all started with a traffic accident, involving the said van and another vehicle.
… and threats
While the 33-year-old driver of this van wants to make a statement, the couple in the second car, a 19-year-old man and woman, don’t hear it the same way. “They want to be given money for the repairs, but the driver of the van refuses”.
The two young people then called reinforcements. “A 21-year-old friend arrives and allegedly threatened the man driving the van with a handgun. He would have more or less brutalized him”. Faced with the determination of his interlocutors, the thirty-year-old accepts their demands and urges them to follow him to his home.
He manages to run away
The driver of the van is then won, according to this same source, by “a flash of lucidity. He allows to pass in front of his criminals when entering his building lobby and he manages to slam the magnetic door in order to deny them access.
His escape is successful, and the three pursuers take to the road again… stealing his van. Indeed, “they spread out with their car and the van of the individualwhich will be found in the canal”.
The two men of the trio referred
The trace of the trio was finally found. Arrested on March 16, he initially denies the facts. But on the occasion of another hearing, one of three recognized individuals physically assaulting the driver of the van”. The young woman is left free. As for the two men, they were referred Thursday, March 17, 2022, for “attempted extortion at gunpoint, theft in a meeting resulting in a two-day ITT, and degradation of private property”.
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