Presented as a "first cousin of Adama Traoré" by the lawyer of the latter's family, a young man drowned in the Seine in Marly-le-Roi on the night from Sunday to Monday.
He had been chased by the police after they spotted five men loading a motorcycle into a van.
The General Inspectorate of the National Police was charged with an investigation to determine the exact causes of his death.
A cousin of Adama Traoré, whose death after his arrest in 2016 was erected as a symbol of police violence, drowned in the night from Sunday to Monday in the Seine during a chase with the forces of the 'order, corroborating sources indicate.
According to a police source, the man was chased on Sunday around 11 p.m. in Marly-le-Roi in Yvelines by the police, who had spotted five men loading a motorcycle into a van.
During the pursuit, he stopped the utility near the Seine and threw himself into the river at the Ile de la Loge, added the police, who did not specify either the age or the identity of the victim.
"Testimonies which indicate that he did not jump into the water"
Breathless, he tried to turn around to regain the bank but drowned "a few meters from the edge, while a workforce had jumped into the water to rescue him," continued the same source.
Taken out of the water by the police, the man was in cardio-respiratory arrest.
Despite a heart massage, a doctor pronounced her dead at 12:09 am.
The lawyer of the Traoré family, Me Yassine Bouzrou, specified that the victim was the "first cousin of Adama Traoré", Mahamadou Fofana, confirming information from
Paris Match
.
"Police say he jumped into the water and drowned. Today I say there are testimonies that indicate he did not jump into the water," added Me Bouzrou.
"In view of these testimonies, the version given by the police is questioned," he continued.
The General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN), the "police force", was charged with an investigation to determine the causes of the death of the young man, we learned from a judicial source.
An autopsy was to take place on Tuesday, said the Versailles prosecutor's office.
Adama Traoré, a young black man of 24, died in 2016 in controversial circumstances shortly after his arrest by the gendarmes in Val-d'Oise.
This affair found a strong echo in France after the planetary wave of indignation aroused by the death, in May in the United States, of George Floyd, a black man killed by a white policeman.