FRANCE: Christophe Fauviau (45), the former French army helicopter pilot who confessed to drugging his children's tennis rivals, was yesterday sentenced to eight years in prison for causing a fatal car crash.
On July 3rd, 2003, Fauviau put tablets of the anti-anxiety drug Lorazepam in the mineral water bottle of Alexandre Lagardère (25), before a tennis match against Fauviau's son Maxime.
Fauviau drugged tennis players 27 times between 2000 and 2003. His victims experienced weak knees, dizziness, nausea or fainting, and several were hospitalised.
Overwhelmed with fatigue, Lagardère gave up after the first set, then slept at a friend's house for two hours before heading for his parents' home. He fell asleep at the wheel, crashed into a tree and was killed.
"I'm relieved. It's over," Lagardère's tearful mother Bernadette said as she left the courtroom. "I hope one thing," said Bernard Lagardère, Alexandre's father. "That's when the Fauviau family get together, they remember that in our home, there will always be one missing."
Fauviau said earlier, begging the Lagardères to forgive him: "It's something that completely took me over, and I couldn't imagine that I could be responsible for the death of your son. I never wanted things to turn out like this."
Watching his son and daughter play tennis filled him with such anguish, Fauviau said, that he took Lorazepam, the same drug he used to undermine their opponents. Fauviau's son, Maxime, testified that his father "blew a gasket and didn't calculate the consequences - he's too involved in tennis".
His wife Catherine said she never dreamed Fauviau was drugging tennis players. "If I had, it would have been suitcases or the psychiatrist," she said.
Valentine, Fauviau's 16-year-old daughter, said she had noticed "tired girls . . . but nothing more than that" on tennis courts where she played.
"I never needed anyone to help me win," she added. A rising tennis star, Valentine intends to continue her career - without her father's assistance.
The verdict was handed down by the assizes court in Mont-de-Marsan, southwest France. Fauviau could have received up to 20 years. His lawyer Pierre Blazy attributed the relatively light sentence to the fact that the crazed tennis father clearly had no intention of killing.
"He's not a thief or a murderer, he's not someone who wanted to kill or meant harm."