A young rugby player, author of a dangerous tackle who left a quadriplegic an opponent in a school match at the end of 2022, was sentenced Tuesday by the Tarbes Criminal Court to nine months suspended prison sentence. A sentence lower than what the public prosecutor had required (18 months) during the trial which took place on December 17.
Two years earlier, victim Mathias Dantin, 17 years old at the time, suffered this bad gesture at the end of a rugby match in VII between two high schools in the Hautes-Pyrénées. The young man, affected by the cervical, did not get up. Since then, he has lived in an automated wheelchair and has lost the use of its lower limbs and only enjoys a very partial mobility of his arms.
“Rugby is over for me”
The defendant “deliberately chose an aggressive defensive action and a source of violence with the forecast that it would result in an attack on the natural person of his opponent,” tried the court in his decision rendered on Tuesday. During the hearing, he had apologized to Mathias Dantin, let go: “Since this accident, rugby, it’s over for me. »»
The conviction, which will not be registered in its criminal record, is accompanied by a compensation of 2,000 euros to pay to the victim and his family. “It’s very complicated for me to talk about rugby,” said Mathias Dantin during the trial. It is a sport that has changed a lot of lives. I no longer practice it, I can’t look at it anymore, I am no longer. I don’t want to hear about it. »»
(tagstotranslate) Rugby