After a leak of a dozen days, a man suspected of having fatally struck a teenager in Montpellier during celebrations on the sidelines of the World Cup was arrested on Tuesday, indicted and imprisoned, the family of the victim expressing “his relief”.
Arrested around 6:00 a.m. near Perpignan, this 20-year-old man was “indicted for charges of intentional violence with a weapon resulting in death without intention of giving it” and placed in pre-trial detention, specified at the end of the day the public prosecutor of Montpellier, Fabrice Bélargent.
The driver had fled on the night of December 15 after hitting 14-year-old Aymen in a car in the underprivileged district of La Paillade, in the north-west of Montpellier. He had been quickly identified and was actively sought.
According to the first elements of the investigation, the driver would have “violently” left his line of vehicles following the seizure of a French flag which was held at the window of his car, during the celebrations after the victory of the France versus Morocco in the semi-finals. It was then that he allegedly hit the teenager, who died shortly after his medical treatment.
“No statement”
The imprisoned young man was indicted for a second count of “wilful violence with a weapon resulting in total incapacity for work for more than eight days”, also indicated the prosecutor, who did not specify how many people were injured. by his vehicle on the evening of the match.
According to Mr. Bélargent, the indicted “did not make any statement during his first appearance interrogation”. He has already been prosecuted in 2021 for lack of driver’s license and lack of insurance.
Asked by AFP, his lawyer, Jean-Baptiste Mousset, said he “did not wish to comment on the charges”.
For Aymen’s family, “it’s a great relief”. “We now know that he is arrested and that justice will be done, that he will be punished, that he will receive, I hope, a sentence commensurate with what he has committed”, reacted to from AFP his older brother, Said Rabhi.
“It is not a question of revenge, simply that justice be done, even if it is not by stopping it that it will bring us back our little one”, added Saïd, who manages the snack bar near which his brother has been killed.
“Aymen was coming out of the snack bar where he had watched the match when he was hit and crushed. He was not part of the group that surrounded the vehicle,” family lawyer Marc Gallix said on Tuesday.
World bereaved
This death had aroused great emotion locally and bereaved this World Cup where celebrations had multiplied all over France until the defeat of the Blues in the final against Argentina.
Brief scuffles also broke out the day after the tragedy in two underprivileged districts of Montpellier. The prefect then called for “calm” and “appeasement” and denounced in passing the “untruths and false information (which) circulate on social networks, helping to excite the spirits”.
The teenager’s family had done the same, expressing their “confidence in the institutions of the Republic, police, justice”.
Last Tuesday, a thousand people paraded in Montpellier, white roses in hand, to pay a last tribute to the teenager.
In front of the funeral center, his older brother once again called for “appeasement”, “prayer” and “recollection”.
“It takes a lot of patience,” he added, before the young man’s coffin, covered with a green funeral sheet, was buried in the Muslim square of the cemetery.
Aymen was a “solar child, adorable, full of energy, joy and good humor”, described his history and geography teacher.
27/12/2022 19:05:16 – Montpellier (AFP) – © 2022 AFP