Véronique Monguillot remained standing, upright, leaning on the desk and counted twenty-eight years of life with the man of her life. “This boy was handsome, he was mine,” she smiled on the witness stand before confiding her dark thoughts: “I had prepared everything to end this and join him. »But she, she said, she endured “for our daughters, for our girls,” as he said. Next, the three sisters took turns before the Criminal Court of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques to tell the story of their father, “very proud of us,” they said in unison. “He supported Me unconditionally,” recalls the eldest, Mélanie, 27, whose upcoming marriage is tinged with bitterness, “at the thought of this absent father who will not be present.”
Manon, the youngest, 24, says she regularly rereads the last text messages exchanged with her father and that she had maintained “hope every day, as long as he was online,” then the “shock of having to choose his coffin.” ” and that. detail “of having to choose a hat for her father because” the medical teams had not been able to put the bones of her skull back in their place. With a trembling voice she also expresses her pain, on each of her birthdays, on her father’s, on Father’s Day and on every Christmas. “When I see the profile of these individuals (the accused), they must have acted like fools given dad’s profile: 1.83 m, 100 kg. I refuse to hear that the victims are in the box. At twenty years old I faced the tragedy of my life. My suffering and that of my mother terrify me. »
“He told me: I’m making my last trip and I’ll be back.”
At the checkout, Wyssem M. has been doubled up for several hours. With his head buried in his shoulders, he seems to want to disappear behind the glass. The court, like the public, listens to witnesses. It is not about interrupting this flow. It’s time for a public goodbye. For almost an hour the youngest, Marie, 21 years old, speaks. She tells us about each sporting activity that her father encouraged her to try, a 46 km bike ride, small eating habits, the belly sandwich… She speaks at length, as if to bring it back to life: “I said more today than in the past.” three years,” he says.
He also recounts having met his father while he was going surfing that fatal Sunday, July 5, 2020, and his bus was returning from the beach late, “which allowed me to meet my father for the last time at 6:30 pm He told me: I make my last trip and I come back, it will have been your last trip. The young woman concludes: “Our mourning has not yet begun. We have been waiting for this trial for three years. But even if one day begins, our mourning will never end. »
