A former soldier who organized a survival course in 2020 that left a 26-year-old man dead after eating a wild plant was sentenced in France on Monday to three years in prison, one of which was suspended.
After leaving the army, Potinairii Malardé, 51, founded his survival internship company, Aïto Survivor, in 2015, which attracted a large clientele.
The one organized on August 8, 2020 was entitled “Workshop Water and Nutrition: Discovery of Edible Plants”.
After learning to tie knots and start a fire, the trainees had found themselves near a stream to identify the edible character of what surrounded them.
But Potinairii Malardé mistakes the wild carrot for a poisonous plant that resembles it, the saffron oenanthus, a cousin of the hemlock.
It is this plant that Ulysse, one of the trainees, will cook with nettles, a dish to which the ex-soldier will invite the rest of the group.
All who did will be ill to varying degrees, from vomiting to convulsions, and hospitalized. Despite treatment, Ulysse, a 26-year-old Parisian, died three days later.
During the March 13 hearing at the Criminal Court of Lorient in western France, Potinairii Malardé tried to minimize his responsibility by assuring that participants “should not cross the river to pick”. But in the end he let go: “I was definitely wrong”.
The former soldier with a “borderline” personality was prosecuted for manslaughter but also negligent assault, forgery and use of forgeries, subletting property without a permit or insurance, according to an expert.