A fireworks display killed two people on Thursday evening July 14 in Cholet (Maine-et-Loire). As the audience watched the pyrotechnic show, a shooting accident occurred. According to the public prosecutor, Eric Bouillard, tense shots hit a group of people located regarding sixty meters from the firings. A 7.5-year-old boy died, along with his 24-year-old sister. A third person from the same family was hit by fireworks and was taken to hospital. No other injuries were reported, the prosecutor said.
The place of the accident, very close to the firing, is already questioning. ” Should access to this area have been prevented? It’s one of the questions we ask ourselves”, acknowledges Eric Bouillard to the daily West France. An investigation for involuntary homicide was entrusted to the Departmental Security of Maine-et-Loire and to the police station of Cholet.
Call for witnesses
Laurent Picard, who came to the fireworks with his two daughters aged 8 and 13, witnessed the accident, of which he posted some video images on Facebook. “I was 5 or 6 meters from the explosion with my two daughters, I received sparks and felt the heat of the blast”he testified to Agence France-Presse. “Fortunately, where I was placed I served as a shield for my daughters in a way”, he added, before asking: “Is it a rocket that went askew or exploded on the way down? It happened so fast, I can’t tell.”.
Shortly following the explosion, Mr. Picard saw a man lying on the ground, apparently burned, and a woman who was being given cardiac massage by paramedics. “It was screaming everywhere, it was a bit of panic”, he recalls. Despite the incident, the fireworks were completed and the crowd dispersed, he said.
Many videos circulated that night on social networks. For the good of the investigation, the owners of images are invited to contact the police station of Cholet (at 02 41 64 82 00).
At 1:45 am, the intervention was still in progress. The national police of Cholet and Angers, the prosecutor and 70 firefighters from Maine-et-Loire and Vendée were on site.
The Ille-et-Vilaine company Hubert Thézé Pyrotechnie fired the fireworks in Cholet on Thursday evening, as since 1994. Six pyrotechnicians were in charge of the visual and musical show, for which the firing system was computerized.