PARIS—A French police officer is being investigated for homicide after shooting dead a 17-year-old on Tuesday morning in the Paris suburb of Nanterre after the youth failed to comply with an order to stop his car, the local prosecutor’s office said.
BFM TV broadcast images of sporadic clashes breaking out between youths and police on Tuesday evening, as anger over the death of the teenager grew in the local community.
The officer fired at the boy, who subsequently died from his wounds, said the Nanterre prosecutor’s office.
A video shared on social media, verified by Reuters, shows two police officers beside the car, a Mercedes AMG, with one shooting as the driver pulled away.
One passenger was taken into police custody but later released while police were unable to contact another passenger, the prospector’s office said. The driver was “known to the judicial services for having refused to comply with a traffic stop” on a previous occasion, it said.
Paris police chief Laurent Nunez told BFM TV that “this act raises questions for me” and that the justice system would decide whether or not it was appropriate.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said in a Twitter post that the General Inspectorate of the National Police was investigating “to shed light on the circumstances of this drama.”
