He had been on the run for a dozen days. The man suspected of having fatally struck a teenager in Montpellier, after the victory of France over Morocco during the Football World Cup, was arrested, indicted and imprisoned on Tuesday December 27. The victim’s family expressed relief.
They were numerous, in the streets of the popular district of La Paillade, in the north-west of Montpellier, when the tragedy occurred on the night of December 14 to 15, during the celebrations which followed the victory of the team of France of football against that of Morocco, in semi-final of the World Cup in Qatar.
According to the elements provided by the prosecution, the driver would be ” violently got out of his line of vehicles and allegedly hit Aymen, a teenager who was coming out of the snack bar run by his big brother and where he had just watched the match on television. The young man, aged 14, died shortly after being taken care of by the emergency services.
Quickly identified, the driver had fled and had been actively sought since, until his arrest around 6:00 a.m. on the morning of Tuesday, December 27, near Perpignan. This 20-year-old man was then indicted for “willful violence with a weapon resulting in death without the intention of giving it”, before being placed in pre-trial detention in the evening. He was also indicted for a second count of “willful violence with a weapon resulting in total incapacity for work for more than eight days”.
According to Fabrice Bélargent, public prosecutor of Montpellier, the indicted ” made no statement during his first appearance interview “. He has already been prosecuted in 2021 for lack of driver’s license and lack of insurance.
While the drama had aroused a lot of emotion in Montpellier, Aymen’s family had never ceased to call for appeasement. After the arrest of the suspect, she expressed, through the mouth of Saïd, Aymen’s big brother, her relief and her confidence in justice.