France faced a deepening crisis on Thursday as riots continued to spread across the country in response to the fatal police shooting of a teenager of North African descent during a traffic stop in a Paris suburb.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin reported 150 arrests during a second night of unrest, as public anger spilled onto the streets in various towns and cities nationwide. President Macron held a crisis meeting with senior ministers to address the shooting, which has reignited long-standing concerns regarding police violence and systemic racism within law enforcement agencies, raised by rights groups and residents of low-income, racially diverse suburbs surrounding major French cities.
The 17-year-old victim, named Nahel, was shot in Nanterre, located in the western outskirts of Paris. The local prosecutor confirmed that the officer involved has been placed under formal investigation for voluntary homicide, equivalent to being charged in Anglo-Saxon jurisdictions.
Macron publicly denounced the shooting on Wednesday, labeling it as unforgivable, and during the emergency meeting, he condemned the ongoing unrest. A video circulating on social media depicted two police officers standing near a Mercedes AMG car, with one officer firing at the teenage driver from close range as he drove away. The victim succumbed to his wounds shortly after the incident, according to the local prosecutor.
Sources familiar with the investigation revealed that the teenager, who was underage and therefore not eligible for a full driving license in France, was driving illegally. The Nanterre prosecutor stated that he had previous encounters with law enforcement for failing to comply with a traffic stop order. Prosecutors assert that on Tuesday, the boy failed to obey the officers’ instructions.
