“We don’t want to wage war on the police, we just want to know the truth”: the older sister of a 17-year-old girl, injured along with two other minors after a scooter chase with the police, wants explinations. “It is necessary to be transparent about what happened, we need it to move on,” also asks the mother of the third teenager.
On April 13 shortly before midnight, in the 20th arrondissement, a scooter ridden by three minors, aged 17, 14 and 13, one of whom was not wearing a helmet, was chased by a police car and fell. The 17-year-old driver was hospitalized and her vital prognosis was still engaged on Thursday. His 13-year-old brother was injured in the liver and another passenger, aged 14, was hit in the knee, the lawyer for the two families, Arié Alimi, told a press conference.
An investigation entrusted to the IGPN
The latter filed a complaint for attempted murder by a person holding public authority, with a weapon by destination, on minors. The Paris prosecutor’s office entrusted the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN) with an investigation into the conditions in which the scooter fell, and opened another investigation into the driver’s refusal to comply.
According to the police headquarters, the police “wanted to check” the scooter but “the driver refused to stop” and “took a street in the opposite direction before losing control” of his two-wheeler. For the families of the minors and their lawyer, there is no doubt that the scooter was hit by the police.
“A manifest desire for concealment”
A 37-year-old woman, presenting herself as a witness to the facts, told the press on Thursday that she saw the police vehicle hit the two-wheeler. “I saw the scooter rise and especially the bodies ejected before falling back on the pavement,” she added.
This woman also claims to have been ordered by a police officer to erase videos she had made just after the shock. “An inspector clearly threatened me and said that I was going to have big problems and end up in police custody if I did not erase the videos”, she assured. Me Alimi denounced “a manifest desire for concealment, a desire to destroy evidence, a desire also to organize a procedure which would aim to criminalize the children themselves”.