Pyromania, addictions, mystical delusions: at trial of incendiary on rue Erlanger, life of problems

The Paris Assize Court leaning on Monday and Tuesday, on the course and personality of Essia Boularès, at the origin of a fire having killed ten in Paris in 2019, whose health mental asks question.

by Henri Seckel

Perhaps it is necessary to start with the problems that Essia Boularès did not have had. Essia Boularès did not have a difficult childhood, on the contrary: “Very happy.” She did not grow up in a disadvantaged environment: her father, Mourad, was an interpreter at Unesco, her mother, Michèle, professor of French at New York University in Paris. No money problems, intellectual parents and magnets; Boularès children were on good rails, which the elder borrowed, Mariam, director of a photographers agency in Paris, and the youngest, Yacine, saxophonist in New York.

Essia Boularès, the youngest, derailed. On the night of February 4 to 5, 2019, she lit a fire in front of the door of her neighbor who reproached her for listening to the music too loud. The fire spread to the whole building. Ten people died. Here is this 44-year-old woman before the Paris Assize Court for a crime liable to perpetuity.

The accused, that four years of pre -trial detention and a heavy drug treatment did not help, took ten minutes to melt in tears on the first day of his trial, Monday, February 6, under the gaze of many former neighbors From 17 bis, rue Erlanger (Paris 16 e ): “It was an insane gesture, I did not think about the consequences. It was in a somewhat kid of revenge. ‘I never wanted to kill anyone, I just took this towel, I put it under the doormat, I activated my lighter and I left without turning around. I did not think it could cause something to As horrible. I am really sorry for the families of the victims, they live a drama, but I too live a drama, everyone lives a drama. “

Since it is established that Essia Boularès set fire but did not intend to kill anyone, the stake of this trial lies elsewhere. The president of the court, Franck Zientara, summed it up from a sentence at the start of the hearing: “The debates will allow us to determine how fragile you are.” In filigree, this question: the place of the accused Is it in prison, or in a closed structure of psychiatric care?

Thirty stays in a psychiatric hospital

Essia Boularès has a problem with alcohol, an ancient addiction, born in the wake of a period of overweight and then anorexia, which earned it a first detox treatment at 17 years. “I was twenty-four beers per day.” At the time of the fire, it was only “six or seven”, plus a bottle of wine and “three or four joints”. Essia Boularès also has a problem with drugs, she took a lot, the 110,000 euros inherited on the death of her father, in 2012, were widely left in cocaine.

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