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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Limoges city hall said the car was carrying a father and his young children, who were “shocked and traumatised”.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
One of the crosses, surrounded by traces of blood, was 30 or 40 metres (yards) from the point of impact between the two vehicles.<\/p>\n
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”.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
Some scuffles erupted in the city after the accident, with some vehicles burned, though calm had returned by Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n
Authorities have deployed a squad of riot police to the neighbourhood where the incident occurred.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
His death sparked several nights of urban violence across the country, with incidents of looting amid clashes between rioters and security forces.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n
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