Adam (first name has been changed), 14, crosses paths with Nahel on his way to college to take the patent exams, this Tuesday, June 27, in Nanterre.
“Nahel is his big brother from the neighborhood. He immediately offered to take him to my son”his father told Parisian. “He didn’t know that Nahel didn’t have a driver’s license, nor that he was still a minor.”
Adam settles in the back seat of the yellow Mercedes A-Class, the front seat being occupied by another friend of the 17 year old teen.
“The policeman told his colleague to shoot”
The car was spotted by two police officers from the Public Order and Traffic Department (DOPC), who ordered them to pull over. “Nahel did not want to stop”, confirms Adam’s father.
Officers manage to approach from the driver’s side as the Mercedes is stuck in a traffic jam. “The police (…) pointed their gun at Nahel”writes Adam in a text transmitted to the Parisian.
Nahel would have taken “about three strokes” and would have tried to “protect your head”while one of the policemen allegedly told him “that he was going to put a [balle] in the head”.
Nahel would have “released the brake probably out of panic, trying to protect himself. The car moved forward on its own. It was an automatic. And the policeman told his colleague to shoot. And the shot went off”.
“There was no blood but he was leaning to the side”
Adam doesn’t immediately understand that his friend has been hit. “Nahel, after receiving the ball, he said: “He’s crazy, he shot”.”
The car “accelerate suddenly” and adam “feels a shock”, while the Mercedes fits into street furniture. “There was no blood but [Nahel] was leaning to the side.”
Adam tries to get out of the vehicle but does not succeed immediately because of the “child safety”. He ends up getting out and is arrested in the process by one of the two bikers.
“I put my hands up so he wouldn’t shoot me. I found myself on the ground. I said I hadn’t done anything and [le policier] said: “Shut up”. And he handcuffed me.”
“He shouldn’t have shot”
Adam is driven into a police car, where he sees one of the officers giving Nahel a heart massage.
He would then have heard one of the agents tell his partner that he “shouldn’t have fired because they were going to barrage further”adding that “Nahel was dead”.
Adam is taken into custody before being released a few hours later. Today, a week later, “he suffers”, entrusts his father to Parisian. “He has absences, at the moment he sleeps very badly.”
Police officer charged
The third occupant of the car, the front passenger, went to the premises of the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN) in Paris on Monday, where he was heard.
The police officer responsible for the fatal shooting was indicted for intentional homicide and imprisoned. A fundraiser for his family exceeded one million euros on Monday, arousing the indignation of many people in France.
