Tensions had already arisen the previous night. A man had been fatally shot by a policeman who was trying to arrest him on Saturday during a check.
Urban violence erupted overnight from Sunday to Monday in Sevran (Seine-Saint-Denis) and a bus was burned in Aulnay-sous-Bois. This new episode of tension comes after the death on Saturday of a man driving a stolen van, killed by the shooting of a police officer. “Eight vehicles including a heavyweight“were deliberately set on fire and the fire spread to four other vehicles, in the Beaudottes district of Sevran, detailed a police source. Five arrests took place, she specified.
Burning barricades were set up in Rougemont, another district of this popular city north of Paris, the source added. Shortly before midnight in the bordering town of Aulnay-sous-Bois, the driver of a public transport bus had to stop in front of a barricade erected in the middle of the road and asked passengers to get off, another said. police sources. A “thirty hooded individuals armed with iron bars“then ordered him to get off the bus, which they stole and then set on fire in the city of 3,000, she continued.
“We have a bus fire. We have several police officers who have been victims of molotov cocktails and mortars“, says Walid Hrar, a member of the Alliance Police 93 union. A specialized intervention brigade was called in as reinforcements last night: the CRS 8. “It is a republican security company which intervenes fairly quickly, and which is there to provide assistance to local staff.“, says Walid Hrar.
The previous night had also been marked by a dozen arrests for fire and throwing projectiles at the police deployed as reinforcements to secure the premises. Faced with this situation, a meeting was to be held on Monday between the mayors of Sevran, Aulnay-sous-Bois and Tremblay-en-France, as well as the prefecture of Seine-Saint-Denis.
The scuffles started after the death of a 33-year-old man on Saturday, a few hours after being shot by a police officer during an intervention between the neighboring towns of Aulnay-sous-Bois and Sevran. Around 12:30 p.m., a crew from the Aulnay-sous-Bois anti-crime brigade spotted a van reported stolen and tried to check the driver, who had stopped at a red light on an avenue in this city.
“A policeman came up to the driver’s window and, in circumstances that have yet to be determined, fired his weapon – a single shot – as the van sped off“, according to Eric Mathais, the public prosecutor of Bobigny, in a press release published on Sunday. The motorist has finished his race “several hundred meters further“by hitting parked cars, in an alley of Beaudottes in Sevran, according to the prosecution.
The General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN) was seized of the investigation. The policeman, “in shock, had to be hospitalized and doctors have not yet cleared his hearing“, according to Eric Mathais.
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