“On August 31, 2022 around 7:00 p.m., witnesses saw a firefighter climb the ladder of the truck out of the courtyard of the fire station in Tomblaine, at his request. He then fell several meters in height on the ground,” Nancy public prosecutor François Pérain told AFP on Thursday.
An investigation into the causes of death has been opened to shed light on the circumstances of this death which occurred in a workplace.
“Of these first investigations, the thesis of suicide is privileged over the thesis of the accident,” said the prosecutor. “The man was summoned on Thursday September 1 to the Lunéville police station to be heard following a complaint filed for domestic violence,” he added.
The non-commissioned officer, father of a 4-year-old child and also a volunteer firefighter at the Val de Seille barracks, had been mobilized during the summer for the fires that ravaged the Gironde, in the BRAVO reinforcement column.
“All of his colleagues and the departmental body are plunged into disarray following this sudden and painful disappearance,” Lieutenant-Colonel Bertrand Lepoutère, communications officer for SDIS 54, told AFP.
A similar tragedy occurred in February 2003 at the Tomblaine intervention center which has 55 professional firefighters and around forty volunteers.
