Toulouse: a company in charge of the renovation of the Resistance museum sentenced for manslaughter
Ahmed Benyatine, 59, lost his life on the construction site of the Resistance and Deportation Museum in Toulouse. This father had fallen from an unsecured scaffolding. The company that employed him as a temporary worker has just been convicted of manslaughter.
Othmane Benyatine appeared at the Toulouse Criminal Court without really knowing how to comment on his father’s death. The drama was produced on April 15, 2019, during an interim assignment on behalf of GB Agencement, a Haut-Garonne group specializing in carpentry. The company with 40 employees was prosecuted for intentional homicide on May 9.
Ahmed, 59, fell six meters high from the facade of the Departmental Museum of Resistance and Deportation in Toulouse. It was necessary to convince the family of the deceased, unfamiliar with the functioning of justice, to file a civil action in order to obtain damages.
“I came here above all to get answers, to find out how this could have gone well. Once the trial is over, I think I will be able to mourn and finally be able to move forward, ”breathes the young man. He is mentioned by Karim Benbrahim as the last person to see his father alive. The young man had to dismantle a spiral staircase with the deceased. “With Ahmed, we said to ourselves from the start that it didn’t smell good, that once again, we were entrusting work to m… to temporary workers. We had neither harness nor means of lifting, we had to dismantle a spiral staircase by hand with, as the only means of safety, a guardrail maintained with bare hands by Ahmed in height and the site manager on the ground. The scaffolding started rocking, stuff was falling. Ahmed was on the stairs to be dismantled and toppled over, his head hitting the concrete floor. Me, I was a little lower, I fell about three meters but on the grass. It saved me. This story broke me. I stayed two months in depression. Then, I decided to become my own boss by becoming a freelancer. The interim, for me, is over. »
No prosecution for the manager
The two employees had not received any training on the risks of falling for this type of construction site, as required by law. What the manager of the company had no emblem recognized by the investigators. Neither his company nor himself had had any dealings with the law either directly or indirectly. This did not prevent Me Agnès Dufétel-Cordier, lawyer for the family of the deceased from firing red bullets at the carpentry company: “On this site, we were in total improvisation with an almost complete absence of security dismantling the stairs. »
In his submissions, Christophe Rault, the public prosecutor, asks the court to condemn GB Agencement to a fine of 66,000 euros “We can make a turnover of 9 million euros and still show proof of amateurism”, launches the magistrate. The public prosecutor did not wish to prosecute the manager of the company considering that he had not played an active role in the occurrence of the accident. The company was ultimately fined 56,000 euros. The compensation of the victims will be defined by the social pole of the judicial court.