French teenager (16) dead after collision with police car in Paris suburb 10:42 AM Abroad The boy allegedly refused to stop for the police with his scooter, the public prosecutor says.

A French teenager has died in hospital after being hit by a police car. The sixteen-year-old boy was admitted yesterday in critical condition, French media write. The incident happened in Elancourt, a suburb of Paris. Two officers have been arrested.

The boy would have refused to stop for the police with his scooter, the public prosecutor says. He opened two investigations.

One is about the boy not cooperating with the police. The other was initially about “accidental injury to the driver”, but will now continue as an “accidental manslaughter” investigation. According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the ongoing investigations will “determine the circumstances of this collision”.

Cardiac arrest

A police source told the French channel BFM TV that the boy crashed into one of the two cars after a chase with the police. “My colleagues turned around and saw him for the second time, after which he fled again. A little further on he collided with a second police vehicle at an intersection.”

A police source says the boy was in cardiac arrest when emergency services arrived, AFP news agency reports. They managed to resuscitate him before taking him to the hospital. There he eventually died.

Mass protests

Last night the mobile unit was sent to Elancourt as a precaution to prevent any unrest, but it remained calm. This teenager’s death comes more than two months after a police officer shot and killed 17-year-old Nahel in Nanterre. The police ordered him to stop because several traffic violations had been committed. He allegedly refused to obey the officers.

Nahel’s death sparked mass protests and civil disturbances across the country. At the height of the riots, police arrested nearly a thousand people in one night. The demonstrations against harsh police action, especially in deprived neighborhoods, have degenerated into vandalism and the looting of shops.

“They use Nahel as an excuse,” Nahel’s grandmother said in an interview with TV channel BFM TV. She does not blame the French police as a whole. She has confidence in the prosecution of the police officers who stopped and ultimately killed her grandson, she said. “I believe in justice.”