Limoges, France, Aug 6 (AFP/APP): A teenager riding a scooter and his adult passenger were killed in France after an encounter with police, during which officers said Sunday the pair had fled a patrol and crashed into another vehicle.
The incident comes just weeks after France was engulfed by its worst rioting in years following the police shooting of Nahel, an unarmed 17-year-old of Arab origin, during a road stop.
In the latest deadly incident, police sources say the scooter fled at the sight of a police patrol that was preparing to stop it in Limoges, western France, with officers giving chase before abandoning the pursuit.
Police claim the scooter then ran a red traffic light and collided with a car, killing the 16-year-old rider instantly and injuring the adult passenger, who later died of his injuries in hospital.
Limoges city hall said the car was carrying a father and his young children, who were “shocked and traumatised”.
On the city’s General Leclerc avenue, a major thoroughfare lined with residential buildings, the roadway was strewn with sawdust and crosses indicating the positions of the bodies, according to an AFP journalist at the scene.
One of the crosses, surrounded by traces of blood, was 30 or 40 metres (yards) from the point of impact between the two vehicles.
Police sources said that the pair were riding a powerful Yamaha TMAX scooter and that police “quickly put an end” to their pursuit, “judging the situation too dangerous”.
The regional authorities in Haute-Vienne declined to comment on the case, referring the matter to the Limoges prosecutor’s office, which is expected to release a statement later.
“Our thoughts are obviously with the families of the victims to whom we offer our deepest condolences,” the mayor of Limoges, Emile-Roger Lombertie, said in a statement.
Some scuffles erupted in the city after the accident, with some vehicles burned, though calm had returned by Sunday afternoon.
Authorities have deployed a squad of riot police to the neighbourhood where the incident occurred.
The two deaths come just over a month after the killing in late June of 17-year-old Nahel, who was shot by police after he allegedly refused to comply with officers’ instructions in Nanterre, a suburb northwest of central Paris.
His death sparked several nights of urban violence across the country, with incidents of looting amid clashes between rioters and security forces.
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