A judicial investigation for manslaughter and unintentional injury was opened this Friday after the death in January of Maïcol Goncalves-Furtado, 20, during a chase with the anti-crime brigade in Nice. Last month, the report of the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN) implicated the police. The victim’s family then told 20 Minutes that they wanted a trial.
“After receiving the observations of the parties to the case after the initial investigation conducted by the IGPN, I felt I had to open a judicial investigation so that the investigations could continue in this legal framework under the authority of an investigating magistrate” , said the Nice prosecutor Xavier Bonhomme.
This Friday, Feïza Ben Mohamed, a relative and the instigator of a march for Maïcol, told 20 minutes that this “long-awaited decision” was “good news”. “It is a first step in the path that will lead the family to truth and justice. It is important that she can grieve through a fair trial. “
A note that excluded any chase for refusal to comply
On January 10 around 10 p.m., in full confinement, Maïcol had fled the police behind the wheel of a motorcycle with a friend in the passenger seat. He lost control of the vehicle and fell into a tunnel. On the one hand, a note from the departmental direction of August 20 excluded any chase and the risk-taking it generates, for a simple refusal to comply. On the other hand, to have the right to start a chase, the police had to receive authorization from their radio information and control center. But if they warned her, the police did not wait for an answer.
According to the lawyer of the family Me Nabil Boudi, the IGPN investigation highlighted “a bad behavior of the police officers whose car was not however in contact with the two-wheeled vehicle of the victim”. “Nothing justified the initiation of a dangerous and disproportionate chase for a fact falling within the simple contravention”, he reacted, stressing that the central had also told the police officers that nothing was happening serious in Nice that evening.
The death of Maïcol had aroused great emotion in Les Liserons, a sensitive district in the east of Nice and a demonstration to claim all the light on the case had taken place in early March, bringing together around a hundred people.