K. should have testified by videoconference from Nice at the trial of the July 14, 2016 attack, but the president of the special assize court in Paris, Laurent Raviot, finally vetoed it.

Due to his young age.

The words of this ten-year-old girl, among the survivors, were read to the hearing on Tuesday: “Me, I just wanted candy.

And I didn't know what was going to happen.

And at my small age of four years [at the material time], it is difficult to understand that.

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Her mother, Hager Ben Aouissi, 38, told the court on Friday how she had not hesitated to throw herself between the wheels of the 19-tonne truck driven by Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, pinning her daughter to the ground, for him. save the life.

It was finally the lawyer for the little girl and her mother, Me Sylvie Topaloff, who read a letter written by the little girl at the bar.

“There was mum, tata, E. [her cousin then two years old], grandpa, grandma and doudou rabbit.

I understood when we got up with mom and I saw the truck continue.

At first it was a very good evening and then it turned into a lousy one”, sums up K. in these terms.

"I'm not going to tell you what I saw, it's too horrible"

Since the attack, the little girl has been followed at the Pediatric Assessment Center for Psychotrauma at Lenval Hospital in Nice.

During her audition, her mother had told how she had "completely regressed".

“She kept saying she wanted to go back into my womb.

She took over the pacifier, the bottle, ”she detailed.

“I saw things not to see at my age, explains the little girl again in the voice of the lawyer.

But I'm not going to tell you what I saw, it's too horrible”.

Always plagued by reminiscences that provoke violent attacks of anxiety in her, she suffers, like many adult survivors, from a severe guilt complex.

“She says she was the one who wanted candy and that it was because of her” that we found ourselves in the path of the truck, her mother had explained.

“When we arrived at the candy stand, I was in a hurry to fill my bag, there are too nice girls who let us pass.

I saw the truck first, but mom told me it was going to park.

In my candy bag, there was a spider, a snake, a black and a red raspberry, and a Tagada strawberry,” the child recalls.

" So.

Me, I just wanted candy”, she also repeats, before concluding: “Since that evening, it is very hard, at school, in the street and with the others”.



Post-traumatic stress disorder

The Nice attack killed 86 people, including fifteen minors.

Hundreds of others, including K., suffered a more or less severe traumatic shock, some still present.

More than 60% of the children followed suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) had indicated at the start of the trial the child psychiatrist Michèle Battista of the Lenval hospital.

“A third of the children are doing well.

A third work [sic] but still suffer.

The last third still requires regular care,” she explained.

The child psychiatrist had expressed the wish to see these children become adults "marked by an attack in their childhood" and not "victims for life".

To the youngest, she had said "that the truck had been dismantled and that it would never hurt anyone again, that the police had to take the life of this gentleman [the terrorist] because he did not understand that it was necessary stop it and it won't happen again”.

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