During the 2019 music festival, Steve Maia Caniço drowned in the Loire in Nantes. His death sparked a lot of emotion and indignation. Five years after the tragedy, the trial for involuntary homicide of Commissioner Grégoire Chassaing opens this Monday, June 10 in Rennes. The police officer, currently stationed in Lyon, was at the head of the controversial police intervention which allegedly led to the fatal fall of the young 24-year-old after-school leader.
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On the night of June 21 to 22, 2019, Steve Maia Caniço, 24, fell into the Loire, following a controversial police operation which ended a concert on the banks of the river. His body was found a month later, a kilometer from where he had fallen.
For Maître Cécile De Oliveira, the lawyer for Steve’s family, the guilt of the commissioner there is no doubt : ” The family of Steve Maia Caniço awaits this trial with both a form of concern linked to the importance of this hearing, but also with relief that the case can finally be judged. Commissioner Chassaing made a number of serious mistakes, in particular on the use of weapons and on the dangerousness of police action on the banks of the Loire, on a quay not protected by barriers. By creating, due to the number of tear gas grenades, an extremely toxic cloud, Commissioner Chassaing caused a panic which led to the fall of numerous people in the Loire, including that of Steve Maia Caniço, she continues. Obviously, the chronology will be examined in a very precise way and we are certain that Steve Maia Caniço fell into the Loire due to police intervention. The trial will partly concern the examination of police methods, this will allow us to have, I sincerely hope, a reflection on the methods of action. »
In a few minutes that night, the police used 33 tear gas grenades, ten de-encirclement grenades and used the defense bullet launcher 12 times to dislodge the “party-goers”. An “inappropriate” action according to the IGPN, the police force.
A ” ideal fuse “, according to the commissioner’s lawyer
Divisional commissioner Grégoire Chassaing, responsible for the security of the various sites, is the main defendant. The other persons or legal entities indicted or placed under the status of assisted witness in this case, including the prefect Claude d’Harcourt or the socialist mayor of Nantes Johanna Rolland, all benefited from a dismissal of the case.
Louis Cailliez, lawyer for Commissioner Chassaing, asserts, at the microphone of Pierre Olivierthat Steve Maia Caniço accidentally fell into the river: “ He fell regardless of any contributing factors of a police nature. And for good reason, just a few minutes before his fall in the Loire, which occurred precisely at 4:33 and 14 seconds, Mr. Steve Maia Caniço was sleeping – unfortunately deeply – one meter from the edge of the quay, in a place that was neither lit nor barred, and, in any case, far from the bunker where the evening degenerated. A witness also saw him slip, trip over the edge of the quay and fall into the water at the same place. »
Still according to the lawyer of the commissioner tried for manslaughter, his client is the ideal culprit: “ We purposely focused the entire legal steamroller on Grégoire Chassaing, no doubt for ease and because a trial was definitely necessary. It is for this reason that several months ago, I qualified Grégoire Chassaing as the ideal fuse for this procedure, and I persist and sign. This strategy was all the easier for the prosecution and for the investigating judges as the mass was said, the case was heard. In this case, for a militant fringe of public opinion which had its ready-made opinion from the start, five years ago, on the guilt of police commissioner Chassaing and this, without knowing the reality of the case, or knowing that ‘a truncated, partial, distorted part and, in any case, instrumentalized by some for purposes other than the strict search for truth. »
Read alsoDeath of Steve Maia Caniço: two procedures still in progress