A car rammed into a roadblock put up by protesting farmers in southwestern France on Tuesday, January 23, killing a woman and her daughter and seriously injuring her husband stationed there. The three occupants of the car that crashed into the barrier were taken into police custody on suspicion of involuntary manslaughter, police said. But a local prosecutor, Olivier Mouysset, said that early results of the investigation suggested that the car had not rammed the barrier intentionally.
The vehicle, carrying a couple and a friend, was traveling on the road leading to the barrier despite it being closed to traffic because of the protest. In the dark, it ran into a wall made of bales of straw at the roadblock, hit the three people and only came to a halt when it crashed into the trailer of a tractor, the prosecutor said. A test showed that the driver, a 44-year-old man, was not under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
Simon Bertoux, the prefect of the southwestern department of Ariège where the incident occurred, told a news conference all three occupants of the car were Armenian nationals. The broader southwestern Occitanie region has been a focal point of farmers' protests in recent days.
Farming union representatives on Monday met Prime Minister Gabriel Attal to discuss their grievances, including low food prices, rising charges for farmers, higher fuel prices and environmental protection rules that they say are unacceptable.
The women who were killed were members of the powerful FNSEA farmers union which has been leading nationwide protests. Tensions have been running high, with the FNSEA announcing protests all this week and beyond if the government failed to respond to its demands.
FNSEA president Arnaud Rousseau first reported the incident but said no further details were available. "In the current circumstances that farming is undergoing, this kind of tragedy is difficult to bear," he said.
At his meeting with the farming representatives on Monday evening, Attal promised that a number of measures would be announced by the end of the week, according to Agriculture Minister Marc Fesneau.