After a first police custody, three members of the police crew who carried out the road control which led to the death at the beginning of January of the deliveryman Cédric Chouviat in Paris, were indicted on Thursday July 16 for "manslaughter", announced AFP one of their lawyers, Laurent-Franck Liénard. Another police officer was placed under the intermediate status of assisted witness. 

Cédric Chouviat, 42-year-old delivery man, died Sunday January 5 following a heart attack, during his arrest two days earlier after a stormy police check near the Eiffel Tower during which he was tackled to the ground with his helmet on the head. 

Asphyxia "with larynx fracture" 

Transported in critical condition to the hospital, he died of asphyxia "with fracture of the larynx", according to the first elements of the autopsy communicated by the parquet floor of Paris, which quickly opened a judicial investigation for " manslaughter". 

An expertise unveiled at the end of June reconstituted the last twelve minutes of this roadside check, a "relatively correct" exchange, even if the delivery man demonstrated "a form of provocation". 

The expert noted that the police attempted to end the control several times before the situation deteriorated and the police proceeded to arrest Cédric Chouviat, who then said seven times "I suffocates ", during the twenty seconds of his arrest. 

The police denied hearing these words on the day of the check. When these words were "discovered" at the end of the expert report, they said that they were "devastated", according to the expression of their lawyers, Mes Thibault de Montbrial and Laurent-Franck Liénard. The lawyers were not immediately available on Thursday. 

The "relieved" family

According to the expert report, "almost all" of the exchange between Cédric Chouviat and the police is however "understandable" in the three videos shot by the police officer placed under the status of assisted witness. 

Thursday, the family of Cédric Chouviat said "relieved" of the indictment of the police, in this case which embodies the French debate on police violence, alongside that of Adama Traore, young black man who died in the summer 2016 after his arrest by gendarmes.  

"However, the family" of Cédric Chouviat "considers that the classification of manslaughter is not adapted to the violence and the aggressiveness of the police officers, as it appears from the videos of witnesses and passers-by," adds she in a press release. "These are voluntary blows that led to the death of Cédric Chouviat," insists the family. 

The end of the "bottleneck"

In the penal code, manslaughter is an offense, punishable by the criminal court, while intentional violence resulting in death without intention to give it - the penal qualification desired by the family - constitutes a crime, liable to the court of 'seated. 

Since then, the debate around police violence has found a very strong echo in the world following the death at the end of May in the United States of George Floyd.

In France, he led Christophe Castaner to announce the impending abandonment of the so-called "key to choking" technique of arrest, as claimed by the Chouviat family. His successor in Place Beauvau, Gérald Darmanin, did not return to this announcement.

With AFP

The France 24 week summary invites you to come back to the news that marked the week

I subscribe

Take international news everywhere with you! Download the France 24 app

google-play-badge_FR