Two investigations were opened by the Meaux public prosecutor’s office. Illustrative image. Benoit Tessier / REUTERS
BAC police officers had started a chase with a two-wheeler whose driver had just run a red light.
A 17-year-old teenager died on Saturday following a scooter accident in Seine-et-Marne following a refusal to comply, a tragedy which occurs after the death of several young people in recent months in chases with the police. The young person fatally injured in the accident was the passenger of the two-wheeler whose driver, also aged 17, was still hospitalized on Saturday evening, with his life threatening, according to information transmitted by the Meaux public prosecutor’s office.
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The facts occurred around 11:00 p.m. Friday in the eastern suburbs of Paris, when a crew from the anti-crime brigade (BAC) of Neuilly-sur-Marne (Seine-Saint-Denis) tried to control a scooter which had just run through a fire red, said the public prosecutor of Meaux. Arriving in the town of Chelles (Seine-et-Marne), two kilometers further, the driver slipped on the road and the two-wheeler came “crashing under a vehicle stopped at a traffic light», Detailed prosecutor Jean-Baptiste Bladier in a press release.
The two young people then found themselves trapped under the car, “one of the two – probably the passenger – losing his helmet under the violence of the shock», added the magistrate. Polytraumatized and in cardiorespiratory arrest, the two teenagers were transported to Parisian hospitals, according to a police source, who specified that the passenger died Saturday morning at 9:30 a.m. The Meaux public prosecutor’s office has opened two investigations, according to the prosecutor. The first, for refusal to comply, was entrusted to the Chelles-Villeparisis police station.
The second, on counts of homicide and involuntary injuries, is carried out by the Parisian delegation of the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN), the “font font“. The police headquarters stressed to AFP that “according to the instructions» from the police chief Laurent Nuñez, “the police notified the command room of the vehicle’s refusal to comply» and that they then engaged his “supported“. BAC agents used their “sound and light alarms» to get the scooter driver to stop, in vain, according to the prosecution.
According to the first elements of the investigations, established thanks to the use of video surveillance, “it appears that there was no contact between the scooter and the BAC vehicle», Indicates the prosecutor’s press release. It is “an area where there are numerous video surveillance cameras which, I hope, will enable the investigation to determine all the circumstances», Said the mayor of Chelles, Brice Rabaste (LR), on BFMTV. “It’s important (…) for families, as well as for the police.“, he argued.
“Special vigilance»
During the night from Friday to Saturday, the parents of the two teenagers, worried, presented themselves at the Chelles police station, according to a police source. A “security has been put in place with departmental staff» of law enforcement in Vaires-sur-Marne (Seine-et-Marne), the town where the two young people live, and in the surrounding area, but the situation remained “calm» since the accident, according to another police source.
The authorities have not planned a specifically reinforced system for the night from Saturday to Sunday in Neuilly-sur-Marne, but a “special vigilance» will be ensured in this sector, indicated a second police source. Several young people have died in recent months in France after chases with the police. On the night of October 6 to 7, a 23-year-old young man died in a scooter accident while being pursued by municipal police officers in Saint-Priest (Rhône).
Two months earlier, on the night of August 5 to 6, in Limoges, two young people riding a scooter died after hitting a vehicle while trying to escape a police check. These two deaths in Limoges came a little more than a month after the death, at the end of June, of Nahel, 17, killed by police shooting during a road check in Nanterre. His death triggered several nights of very intense urban violence in the country.