Toulouse: during a bus trip, a family has their suitcases stolen
During the night of Monday to Tuesday, during a bus trip between Rennes and Toulouse, the luggage of a mother and her two children were stolen.
Without being able to fall asleep, Emilie, one eye on her one-month-old and three-year-old children, is going to live a nightmare. This Monday evening, after a week’s vacation in Rennes, the Toulouse family returns home aboard a BlaBlaCar bus. A few minutes before departure, at 9:35 p.m., a bus driver places Emilie’s two suitcases in the hold intended for the Toulouse stop. He indicates that the luggage does not “think anything that the car remains closed until the arrival in the Pink City”. The bus, which is to go to Barcelona, makes stops in Nantes and Bordeaux before stopping in Toulouse. Holds are reserved for each stopover.
Around 4 am, the bus arrives at the Bordeaux bus station. The bus driver, seized with doubts, asks Emilie, awake, to follow him to check if her two suitcases are still present in the hold. The mother of the family descends and notes “with horror” that her luggage has disappeared and that the door of the hold reserved for passengers going down to Toulouse has been opened. During the break, about thirty minutes, passengers try to find the suitcases of Emilie and her two children as well as those of two other passengers who were also victims of theft. The searches are unsuccessful. Angry, the mother sits down next to her sons. “At that moment, I cracked up,” she confides. I started to cry… “
In her two suitcases, there were all the habits of the one-month-old infant, her 3-year-old son’s favorite clothes, and baby’s breastfeeding items as well as maternal equipment (breast pump, bottle warmer… ).
The bus arrives in Toulouse at 7 a.m., “the driver does not apologize and does not offer any solution to repair the damage”, says the Toulouse woman who immediately filed a complaint against X. At the police station, the police advised her not to wear complaint against the driver or the bus company, for lack of evidence implicating their responsibility.
She also has her insurance, which tells her that no compensation will be made because these are not checked bags. We rented it from a pharmacy which asked us for a check for 300e of deposit which it refuses to return to us despite the complaint for theft…”, laments Emilie. She tried to contact Blablacar. Without success. Contacted, the bus company did not respond to our requests either.