The police brigadier suspected of having killed Nahel, 17, on Tuesday in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine), is presented as “an exemplary civil servant” who has distinguished himself several times during his career
- Judicial information was opened on Thursday against the policeman who fired the shot during a roadside check that led to the death of Nahel, in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine), Tuesday morning.
- This 38-year-old biker was presented during the day to two investigating magistrates. He is now indicted for intentional homicide and has been remanded in custody.
- Within the police, he is described as a “seasoned” agent, “an exemplary official”, and “someone very calm”. He received, during his career, several medals and letters of congratulations.
Florian M.’s biker colleagues are “hallucinated that he finds himself in this situation”. This policeman is known, within the Hauts-de-Seine territorial road safety company, as being “someone very calm”, who is “not a mad dog”. “He was an exemplary civil servant,” slips a source familiar with the matter. “He is a seasoned police brigadier, who had the confidence of his hierarchy”, for his part affirmed the prefect of police, Laurent Nuñez, on CNews . The 38-year-old official was indicted on Thursday for intentional homicide by two Nanterre investigating judges, and placed in pre-trial detention. He is accused of having opened fire on Tuesday on Nahel, a 17-year-old boy during a traffic check. The victim died despite the intervention of the Samu, who gave him a cardiac massage on the spot.
The public prosecutor of Nanterre, Pascal Prache, returned this Thursday to the thread of events. After taking his shift, Florian M. and his biker colleague spotted a yellow Mercedes A-Class registered in Poland driving at high speed “on a bus lane”. They signalled the driver to stop at a red light, but it started up again. The car “continued on its way”, followed by the two bikers, before getting stuck in traffic. The two police officers then dismounted and “yelled to the driver to stop” by positioning themselves “on the left side” of the car, “one at the level of the driver’s door, the other near the ‘left front wing’.
Eight letters of congratulations
During their hearings before the investigators of the IGPN, the police force, they declared “to have both taken out their weapons” and to have “pointed them at the driver to dissuade him from restarting”, explained the magistrate. “As the vehicle restarted, the police officer near the vehicle’s fender shot the driver once. “According to his version, he would have “felt threatened by seeing the driver restart, being near a wall”, and would have feared that “someone would be knocked down” or that his colleague would be injured. The bullet “crossed the left arm and the thorax from left to right” of Nahel. The car ended its race a few tens of meters further, embedded in a post.
Married and father of a child, Florian M. was “very shocked by this tragedy”, indicated the prefect of police on BFMTV. Before joining the police, he joined the army in 2004 and served in the 35th Infantry regiment in Belfort. After passing through the Sens national police motorcycle training centre, he was assigned to Paris. Originally from the Southwest, he had been working in the Hauts-de-Seine since last September and had never made a wave. Quite the contrary. According to our information, Florian M. has received eight letters of congratulations, an internal security medal and two bronze medals for acts of courage and dedication during his career. The first for his work at the time of the movement of “yellow vests”, the second for having arrested the author of a theft with kidnapping in Val-d’Oise.
Suspension
His police career could therefore come to an abrupt end. The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, “asked the prefect of police to administratively suspend” the biker. While the tragedy aroused great emotion in the country, Linda Kebbab, national delegate of the SGP Police-FO Unit union – of which Florian M. is a member -, calls “for respect for the presumption of innocence”. We have to wait, she says, for the results of the investigations to understand what her “responsibility in fact” is.
The IGPN survey will put things “in their context”. “There was a pursuit of about twenty minutes, with burnt-out fires”, she underlines. This may have led to a feeling of “panic” in this agent who “was afraid of being stuck against the wall”.
