Tragedy in Millas: “I appealed because the barriers were lifted,” said the bus driver during her hearing

The appeal trial of the Millas tragedy continued this Tuesday, October 8, 2024 at the Aix-en-Provence court. The bus driver, Nadine Oliveira, is being tried for  "involuntary manslaughter and injury" and was questioned by the Court.

“We saw the bus calmly push the barrier” of the level crossing, said two witnesses of the fatal school bus accident in Millas (Pyrénées-Orientales) on Tuesday, at the appeal trial of the driver, undermining the latter's defense.

At the beginning of the day, Nadine Oliveira, the defendant, began her hearing with these words: “I appealed because the barriers were up“. The 55-year-old bus driver has never changed her story since her first police custody: according to her, no signal, neither sound nor light, nor barrier dissuaded her from entering the Millas level crossing.

The 14 December 2017, the bus taking 23 middle school students home after class was in the middle of the tracks when a regional express train hit it at 75 km/h, a collision that left six people dead. dead and seventeen injured, some seriously. Nadine Oliveira, who had to be hospitalized after 4 days of hearing during the first trial, had been sentenced in her absence to 5 years in prison, one of which was firm.

On Tuesday morning, she was able to retrace, minute by minute, the unfolding of the day of the tragedy, only bursting into tears at the thought of its outcome, when she woke up in the middle of “the screams and cries of children”.

The day of December 14, 2017 had begun “as usual”, with an inventory of her bus. Nadine Oliveira was in a “normal” state according to her. For her last journey of the day, she was in “no hurry”, and knew by heart this route that she took four times a day.

“Engraved forever”

But her version of events was largely contradicted by the investigation, and by the various testimonies of the people present at the scene.

First of all, that of an employee of Saur, a sanitation company, who, seeing the barriers of the level crossing closing, was waiting with his colleague on the other side of the road when he saw that “the bus calmly pushed the barrier, as if a door was being opened”.

“My colleague and I were stunned, we asked ourselves “What is she doing, but what is she doing? made?'". Asked several times about the certainty of his memories, the witness assured that this day was "etched forever" in his memory: "we were in shock, it was because of the children's cries that we reacted". "Maybe she didn't see it, the bus is so high", considered this witness.

Another driver, who also arrived at the scene when the level crossing was closed, confirmed this version: “the bus pushed the barrier very gently, there was no impact”. The investigation director, questioned Tuesday morning, confirmed that after the accident, the barrier was found “twisted, in the closed position” and that no faults in the level crossing had been noted.

To explain Mrs Oliveira's action, he referred to “the force of habit” : the driver had used this level crossing 400 times and had never found it closed. But also "the hyperconcentration she demonstrated during her maneuver", a maneuver described by all as "complicated" to approach the bend in front of the level crossing, and which the driver detailed meticulously to the investigators.

Seven years after the events, this gendarmerie major more accustomed to criminal investigations described "a war scene". The Saur employee, “scarred for life”, still remembers “a girl with a head injury and a little boy with a crushed wrist, they cried non-stop”.