Millas collision: Decision after the call of the school bus driver

Seven years after the death of six college students in the collision between a school bus and a TER in Millas (Pyrénées-Orientales), the bus driver will be able on Friday afternoon if the Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal retains it also his responsibility in this drama.

The deliberation will be pronounced at 2:00 p.m. and broadcast live at the Perpignan courthouse for families who could not make the trip to the Bouches-du-Rhône.

Despite his heart concerns, which had led him to miss a large part of her second trial in October, Nadine Oliveira, aged 55, should be present on Friday in Aix, according to Me Jean Codognès, one of his lawyers, questioned by AFP.

They had pleaded the release since their client, who had appealed to her sentence to five years in prison, one year firm at first instance in 2022, has argued from the start that the barriers of the Millas level crossing were lifted when she was ‘is engaged with his bus, violently struck by a TER this December 14, 2017, killing six children and injuring 17 other college students, including eight seriously.

A version that the Advocate General did not retain, who had requested in October an increased sentence of five years in prison, two years of which were firm, accompanied by a cancellation of all the defendant’s driving licenses, of a ban to iron them for five years and finally a ban on carrying out any activity in the transport sector.

In this case, many witnesses contradict the driver’s version. Motorists opposite, on the other side of the passage, had thus seen the bus “Put the barrier, as we open a door”. Likewise one of the college students sitting everything at the front of the bus described that the vehicle had “Tapped the barriers”.

The attitude of Nadine Oliviera, inflexible on her version of the facts, who has never given an apology for the accident that she is accused of having provoked and which has missed most of the hearings in her two trials, aroused a form of exasperation in many victims.

“We are waiting for the conviction to be confirmed or even aggravated and we hope that it is the end of this fight. It was she, the driver, who wanted this second trial and she disappeared again, so it was complicated to manage for families ”told AFP Me Vanessa Brandone, who represents several families among the 120 civil parties of this file.

Many now hope that she will not go to Cassation if she was again condemned. “She is quite exhausted” By this judicial journey, has confined itself to indicating at this stage its lawyer.