• 11 months ago
The Land Rover Defender #243 driven by Laurent Lebourgeois and Jean-Marie Sounillac, an assistance entry for the Proto Buggy "Le Duc de Bourgoigne" of Jean-Louis Schlesser, went out of control and overturned several times in the Libyan desert.

It happened on Friday, 27 December 1991, just a few kilometers before the end of the 5th stage of the Rallye Paris-Sirte-Le Cap, near Sabah, territory of Libya. So hard was the impact that the roll-bar of the car collapsed and both the occupants were killed at the scene.

This was the first fatality which happened during the 1992 Rallye Paris-Sirte-Le Cap. Eleven days after Laurent Lebourgeois' and Jean-Marie Sounillac's deaths, also the great rider Gilles Lalay lost his life in an accident in territory of Democratic Republic of Congo. According to a source, another double fatality occurred when a competitor's car (drivers unknown) crashed into a group of spectators in the village of Rig Rig, territory of Chad. Despite the organizer's version by T.S.O.(Thierry Sabine Organization) stated that no one was killed, some days later members of a religious community operating in Chad reported that two unnamed children had lost their lives in the accident; this has not yet been confirmed.

R.I.P

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