“We are Sorry for this accident, our bartender does not recover what he has done, he is in shock, on the verge of depression. “ It is with these words that Sébastien Taupin, one of the four partners who direct the You, won the phone, this Monday, July 28, the day after the accident which seriously burned a 22-year-old woman in his establishment in Juan-les-Pins.
On the circumstances of the fire that ignited the student, this Sunday at 2:30 am, he confirms: “It happened when our bartender turned on a cocktail. He knows that it is his fault but he does not know if it is a shooter who overturned or a bottle that fell in a bad gesture … It happened in a fraction of a second. In any case it fell on the girl and it is indeed a customer who had the reflex to turn off the flames. But our security service immediately sheltered.”
“We cannot say that we have abandoned it”
Contacted this Monday morning, the victim’s brother accused the management of the box “To have simply put it outside with water and ice cubes”. What the manager who was on site refutes that night: “We immediately called the firefighters who were able to intervene quickly. It is wrong to say that we abandoned her. We were with her, we saw her injuries and that it was not going, she was aware. We had recovered the number of her friends to get her news but they no longer answer.”
Asked that the party continued to beat it, Sébastien Taupin explains: “There were people in the club, we could not cut music and risk overflows when we were injured to take care of it.”
“We pay attention to everything”
Could the nightclub be the subject of an administrative closure of the prefecture, as was the case for the restaurant Le Caveau 30, in Cannes, after a heating lamp accident which had burned five people in November 2024? “The investigation will give its conclusions but it is a human error and not a breach of the safety rules. We pay attention to everything, we are up to date with everything and our bartender has been tested negative to narcotics and alcohol,” defends Sébastien Taupin. Contacted, the prefecture has not yet expressed itself on the subject and an investigation is underway at the Antibes police station to determine the exact circumstances of the accident.
Finally, on the dangerousness of flaming the cocktails, the partner explains: “There is no perimeter to set up between customers and the bartender, cocktails are flambé in the same way that we torch a suzette pancake in front of you at the restaurant. It is done in all the bars. The alcohol we use is not supposed to cause fires, it’s Cointreau, a white alcohol flavored.”
