A shadow appears on the screen of the gendarmes, then four tires. The sonar which has been exploring the murky and dark waters of the Camon canal (Haute-Garonne) for several hours has just spotted an imposing object: returned to the roof, a Clio Campus lies five meters deep. After almost six months of research, the investigators have finally located what could be Brice Louge’s car, missing since last February, without leaving a tracece.
In the passenger compartment of the submerged vehicle, a lifeless man is then discovered. It could well be the 30-year-old agricultural worker who vanished from the village of Labarthe-Rivière after being surprised on the night of February 19 to 20 in his boss’s bed by the son of the latter. this. An autopsy was to take place on Wednesday but its results are not yet known.
“Don’t ever come back, you’re fired!” »
Shortly after midnight, the night of the disappearance, Bastien, 24 years old, the son of Nadine, 52 years old, falls on his mother in the arms of the young agricultural worker who has worked for more than ten years within the cereal exploitation of the family as a “handyman”. According to the son’s own statements, Bastien attacked Brice verbally, but not physically. “Get out of our lives! Never come back again, you’re fired! he would have yelled in her face, while insulting his own mother.
That evening, the lover caught in the bag would have fled into the night and the cold at the wheel of his Clio. No one would have seen him afterwards and his phone has since been untraceable.
A high-performance submarine
Quickly, the search is launched. The area is patrolled on the ground and in the air by the gendarmes of the Toulouse Research Section and the Saint-Gaudens Research Brigade. The investigation also goes through interrogations: twice, the four people present the night of the disappearance at the home where Brice was last seen are interviewed. First Nadine, the mother of the latter, Bastien then his companion. But until now, nothing has enabled the gendarmes to detect contradictions in the versions developed by each other.
Contacted by Le Parisien on Wednesday, the public prosecutor of Saint-Gaudens, Christophe Amunzateguy, explains that the canal where the car and the body were discovered had already been probed in recent months. But the river, rather violent because of the EDF Camon dam located nearby, did not offer enough visibility to the gendarmes’ divers.
It is therefore thanks to the assistance of the Franco-German river brigade, which came from Strasbourg, and their high-performance device that the discovery was made. The waves of this garish yellow sonar, in the shape of a torpedo and connected to a police boat, led to the discovery of the car and probably the body of Brice Louge, in charge of the farm both agricultural work and electricity or plumbing.
“Caution must be in order,” said the public prosecutor of Saint-Gaudens, Christophe Amunzateguy. It is probably the remains of Brice Louge but DNA or dental analyzes should confirm it. The criminal or accidental theses “remain on the table”, he adds.
No bullet hole?
The autopsy will have to determine in particular if the victim had water in the lungs, which would indicate that he was alive at the time of his fall in the water. A precise analysis of the Clio, which seems damaged, perhaps due to the intense currents of the river, must also be undertaken.
According to our information, the body is rather well preserved despite its stay in the water since last February. Only a few parts are damaged. The first visual observations do not make it possible to determine the presence of a bullet impact or traces of blows.
So, suicide, accident or criminal trail? Anyway, the parents of Brice Louge “will finally be able to begin the mourning of their son”, confides to the Parisian Me Joris Morer, one of the two lawyers of the parents with Me Camille Lauga. “But the exact circumstances of the death remain to be determined. Pending the results of the autopsy and the various expert reports, no hypothesis should be excluded”.