French schoolboy dies as Macron warns of youth violence

“Schools need to be protected from this,” French President Emmanuel Macron said after the violence.

Paris:

President Emmanuel Macron warned that schools should be protected from “unrestrained violence” by some young people after a French schoolboy died from injuries sustained in a violent attack on Friday.

The 15-year-old was seriously beaten near his school in the southern Paris town on Thursday and was taken to hospital after suffering a cardiac arrest.

He died of his injuries early Friday afternoon, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said police detained five people on Friday afternoon in connection with the attack, including three 17-year-olds, a 15-year-old and a 20-year-old.

It was the second such attack this week, after a 13-year-old girl was attacked outside her school in the southern city of Montpellier on Tuesday, leaving her temporarily comatose.

The two incidents come as tensions rise around French schools, with dozens of educational institutions receiving threats of attack via internal messaging systems.

“There is an unchecked violence among our teenagers, sometimes even in younger and younger teenagers,” Macron said during a visit to a Paris primary school earlier a day before the teenager’s death.

“Schools need to be protected from this,” he said, adding that schools should “continue to be a refuge for our children, their families and our teachers.”

“We will firmly oppose all forms of violence,” he said, adding that investigators were now needed to clarify both incidents.

-“brutal”-

Three people wearing balaclavas were shot on Thursday afternoon in a low-income area of ​​Viry-Chatillon, a town about 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of Paris, police sources said. The 15-year-old student was attacked in the latest assault. .

The male student suffered cardiopulmonary arrest and died the next day, police sources said.

Jean-Marie Vilain, the mayor of Viry-Chatillon, said the boy was walking home from music lessons when he was attacked by “the worst thugs”.

“Such extreme violence is becoming commonplace,” he added. Government spokesperson Prisca Thevinot condemned what she called a “barbaric crime”.

Outside the school on Friday morning before the boy’s death, classmates said they were shocked that the boy had been attacked.

One female student, who requested anonymity, said the male student, Shamseddin, “gets along really well with everyone.”

Another student, 12-year-old Mateo, who had a football under his arm, said he was afraid the attacker would come back.

– Social media insults? –

A teenage girl was attacked outside her school in the southern city of Montpellier on Tuesday.

Prosecutors said the girl, named Samara, had emerged from a coma but was “seriously injured.”

Three alleged attackers have been charged with attempted murder and detained.

They include a 14-year-old girl from the same school in La Mosson-La Paillade, a low-income area of ​​the city, and two boys, aged 14 and 15, educated elsewhere.

“Each of them admitted to beating the victim,” prosecutor Fabrice Belagent said on Friday, adding that the eldest of the three would remain in provisional detention.

“The attack appears to have occurred in the context of a group of teenagers who were accustomed to insulting each other on social media,” Belagent said.

He did not mention religion as a factor.

Samara’s mother told the media that her 13-year-old daughter was bullied by classmates, possibly because her behavior and clothing were considered un-Islamic.

But classmates at the school said Thursday that one of the girls involved in the attack accused Samara of posting an insulting photo of her on social media.

Chemus-Eddine Hafez, the director of Paris’ Grand Mosque, strongly condemned on Friday what he called an “inexcusable attack” on the teenager but warned against politicizing the incident.

“While some insist on blaming Islam, let us focus on constructive solutions to combat bullying,” he said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)