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ACCIDENT

Suspect ‘doesn’t recall’ driving hit-and-run van

A 39-year-old man who turned himself in to police in Ullensaker on Thursday in connection with the hit-and-run killing of 54-year-old Jeff Mwangi Kwirikia said he has no recollection of driving his vehicle at the time of the crash.

Published: 3 February 2012 10:22 CET
Updated: 3 February 2012 14:09 CET

Jeff Mwangi Kwirikia, the father of popular Norwegian-Kenyan singer Stella Mwangi, died from his injuries after he was run over by a van on county road 454 on Tuesday afternoon. The driver fled the scene.

After police made an appeal for assistance, the suspect arrived at the station with his wife saying he had information pertaining to the case. He then accompanied police officers to his parents’ home in Råholt, south-eastern Norway.

In the adjoining garage, police found a Citroen Berlingo van with extensive damage to the front windscreen and the right-hand side of the vehicle. Police had earlier said they were looking for a van that matched this description.

The 39-year-old was charged on Thursday with manslaughter..

“I don’t want to get into what the 39-year-old has told us, but his description helped us find the van,” police spokesman Morten Huse told news agency NTB.

Police said the suspect was racked with emotion when he turned himself in. If found guilty, he could be jailed for up to three years, or up to six years if there are found to be aggravating circumstances.

Defence lawyer Jørun Lægland said he attended a police interview with his client on Thursday.

“As I understand it the circumstances are unclear. My client discovered the damage to the van and went straight to the police,” said Lægland.

According to the lawyer, his client does not remember much from the last few days.

“He doesn’t deny doing this, but he has little memory from the past two days,” Lægland said on Thursday.

“It’s hard to get a proper overview of what happened.”

Police said they were pleased to have received a large number of witness reports from people who said they had seen the damaged van just after 2pm on Tuesday. The vehicle was seen headed in a northbound direction on the stretch of the Trondheim road between Dal and Råholt.

In light of descriptions they had received of the driver, police said they believed the suspect was most likely the person behind the wheel at the time of the hit-and-run collision.  

The damaged vehicle was removed from the garage in Råholt on Thursday for further investigation by police.

The victim's daughter, Stella Mwangi, 25, represented Norway at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2011.

She also recently appeared on television with her father in the Norwegian version of Let’s Dance, in which she was a participant.

“She’s not doing well at all. Stella was very close to her father. She is mainly mourning her loss, not hunting for the driver,” her future father-in-law, Per Rogstad, told newspaper Romerikes Blad on Thursday.

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CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

Published: 17 November 2023 09:05 CET
New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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