Was a high school student injured during a police intervention in Compiègne?

Police intervention during clashes in Villeneuve-La-Garenne (Hauts-de-Seine) in April 2020. -

• Posts massively shared on social networks between November 9 and 10 indicate that a student at Mireille Grenet high school in Compiègne was injured in the head by an LBD shot.

• Contacted by 

  20 Minutes,

  Jules, a 15-year-old high school student and a young volunteer firefighter, said he was injured in the face while going to class, on the sidelines of a high school block in which he was not participating.

• According to him, his injury was caused by the shooting of a police officer in his direction, although he cannot say for sure that it was a defensive ball thrower (LBD).

  IGPN has not yet opened an investigation at this stage

Was a teenager injured in the head by a shot from LBD on the sidelines of a high school block which degenerated on Monday in Compiègne (Oise)?

In any case, this is what many viral posts published yesterday and Tuesday on Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat say.

“This shattered front is that of a high school student from Compiègne, while a blockade was taking place [Monday morning].

On a video released earlier we clearly see a policeman shoot 4 times at head height with his LBD.

If we do not yet know if this injury is indeed that of one of these 4 shots, it is clearly the result of police violence, ”claims the author of one of the most shared publications on Facebook.

The latter aroused indignation among many Internet users, who saw it as a new case of police violence.

Here is one of the viral posts in which an internet user claims that a high school student from Compiègne was injured by a LBD shot on October 9, 2020, on the sidelines of a high school block.

- Facebook

20 Minutes

contacted the victim and reconstructed the chronology of this incident.

FAKE OFF

It is 8 am this Monday when Jules * gets off the bus which drops him off close to the Mireille Grenet high school in Compiègne.

The 15-year-old high school student, in second Melec (electricity trades and its connected environments) and young volunteer firefighter when not in class,

learns that a blockage takes place in front of the establishment gate.

With his comrades, he hurries to go see what is happening.

“High school students, around 7:30 am, first put a padlock on the gate at the entrance to the school, explains the communication service of the Amiens rectorate at 

They then set fire to the surrounding garbage cans without any claim having been made beforehand ”.

As the Compiègne prosecutor, Marie-Céline Lawrysz, told AFP, a first patrol from the police station went to the scene alerted by the outbreak of fire.

The police then wipe "jets of projectiles", and "at least five shots of fireworks mortar".

"In danger", the police abandon their vehicle which is found "degraded" and in which equipment will be "stolen", still according to the prosecutor of Compiègne.

"It was raining tear gas"

"We saw the police car being ransacked, trash fires and the police a little further," explains Jules to

.

During his hearing at the gendarmerie after the facts, he thus mentions clashes between the police, his high school comrades, and "about thirty hooded individuals", as reported in the hearing report that

was able to consult .

"It was then that there was the first charge of the police, with lots of tear gas at the same time," he says.

The students disperse.

Accompanied by some friends, the teenager runs to take shelter a hundred meters away, behind a building on avenue de Huy.

Jules is a few steps from the building when he turns around to wait for one of his friends, who takes a final shot of the police car.

A dull noise is heard.

The high school student receives at the front what he takes for a puck of tear gas, “because [the police] only fired that,” he explains.

“I lost consciousness for a second or two and collapsed to the ground,” describes the high school student.

I tried to get up, but I couldn't ”.

Blood is streaming down his face.

A friend of the young man then contacts the firefighters, but the latter, also taken to task in the violence in front of the school, explain to him that they will not be able to intervene to rescue Jules.

A firefighter was also slightly injured in the forearm by a mortar fire, while he was trying to extinguish a burning garbage can, as the prefecture informed AFP.

It is another young woman, as Jules explained to the gendarmerie in Estrées-Saint-Denis, who takes the initiative to call one of his friends to come and get him, and take him to the emergency room.

12 stitches and a swollen face

In the car, Jules warns his mother around 8:20 am, and sends her a photo of her bloody and swollen face.

It is this photo that has spread on social networks.

"I was hit in the face," he tells her.

Upon receiving the snapshot, the mother lets out a cry of fear and goes urgently to the intercommunal hospital of Compiègne-Noyon, where she arrives around 9am.

The report of the consultation, of which 

was able to read, mentions a "Flash-Ball shot" received "at the level of the head", even if Jules cannot say with certainty if he was injured by a fire from a defense bullet launcher (LBD), or by a pebble from a tear gas grenade.

The injury, again according to the hospital report, resulted in "head trauma without initial loss of consciousness", and a wound to the forehead requiring the installation of "12 stitches [stitches] with absorbable 4.0 thread.

".

Around 9:30 am, the mother and her son leave the hospital, direction Estrées-Saint-Denis and the national gendarmerie, in order to file a complaint.

Tear gas grenade or LBD shot?

Faced with the judicial police officer, Jules narrates his version of the facts, and explains that he did not participate in any damage.

According to the report, the young man indicates that the shooter "was 200 or 300 meters" from him when he received a projectile in the head.

He could not therefore identify him, nor "describe" him, as the judicial police officer asked him.

On the other hand, the young man affirms that it is indeed “a policeman” who shot him, and not a “gendarme or a CRS”, as suggested to him by the judicial police officer.

Jules agrees to go to a medico-judicial unit to be examined and files a complaint for "violence aggravated by three circumstances followed by [total] incapacity for work not exceeding eight days".

Still very shocked, Jules and his mother were to go this Tuesday evening to the forensic service of the hospital of Compiègne.

This consultation aims to determine if the teenager was injured by an LBD shot or a tear gas canister.

The latter, as the police explained to the mother of the high school student, "are thrown in a bell before separating into eight distinct smoking pebbles".

"Considering the size of the impact it has in the skull, I will not hide from you that I have doubts", she emphasizes.

Asked by

, the national police indicates that at this stage, the IGPN has not opened an investigation or been seized for the facts reported by Jules.

In Compiègne, at the end of these clashes, five minors aged 15 to 16 were first arrested, three in possession of objects obviously stolen from the police vehicle, and two for throwing projectiles against the police. order.

Three others were then apprehended by the police.

The eight young people were in police custody Monday evening, in particular for aggravated violence, degradation by dangerous means, participation with weapons in a gathering and aggravated theft, as the prosecutor of Compiègne indicated to AFP, which notes a modus operandi similar "with urban violence that has affected the neighborhood near Clos-des-Roses since early September," with the same hatred of the police.

* The first name has been changed

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