Story By: Ernest Bio Bogore, Sub-Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency:  Newsflash

A man has been convicted of driving under the influence of laughing gas after causing an accident which claimed the life of his front-seat passenger.

The man, 26, whose name was not revealed, was sentenced by the Mulhouse criminal court to three years in prison, two of which were suspended on probation.

The events occurred in Mulhouse, a city and commune in eastern France, close to the Swiss and German borders, at around 11 pm on 5 September. The defendant’s vehicle, in which he was transporting three other people, had hit the facade of a driving school head-on, Ouest-France reports.

The front seat passenger, aged 29, had died before help arrived. The two rear passengers, aged 21 and 28, had been injured, one of them seriously. The driver had been hospitalised in serious condition.

According to the two survivors, the driver had inhaled nitrous oxide, a gas packaged in small bottles, just before the accident. Normally intended for use in pastry siphons, its use is increasingly being diverted, particularly by young people, who use it as a euphoric drug.

According to one of the passengers, before getting behind the wheel, the driver “went to buy balloons and protoxide capsules”.

The passenger insists that the driver inhaled the capsules while driving and that his behaviour changed in a few seconds, saying: “He passed a car and drove away. We could see the wall coming and he was as if he was not there and we were shouting.”

Several cartridges of this gas were found in the crashed vehicle, as well as bottles of alcohol. Blood tests revealed traces of cannabis in the accused, but no alcohol.

According to the experts, the car hit the driving school wall at over 90 km/h.

At the helm, the defendant said he had “trouble remembering” that evening, but admitted to having ingested laughing gas and a “sip” of a mixture of vodka and energy drink “in the early evening”.

Michael Wacquez, the defendant’s lawyer, said: “This is not the nitrous oxide case, but everyone agrees that after inhaling the gas, he changed his behaviour. He lost consciousness. Does this merit three years in prison?”

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