On Monday 28 September 2026 at around 10:30 a.m., outside the Château d’Épluches vocational lycée, blockaded that day, a 14-year-old high-school student faces three police officers. A video filmed by witnesses and viewed hundreds of thousands of times shows the sequence: according to France 3 and Actu17, a female police officer strikes him with a tonfa baton (a rigid truncheon), then another police officer fires at him; the scene begins with a gesture by the student towards the police officer, described in the linked entry. The projectile hits him in the face (Actu17: “right in the face” (translated); France 3: in the jaw) and he collapses.
The sources do not agree on the weapon: France 3 speaks of a grenade-launcher shot (and notes that the Cougar is not used at point-blank range), 20 Minutes of an LBD shot, Actu17 of a shot from a Cougar launcher, a term the prosecutor himself uses in his statement. The family’s lawyer speaks of an LBD in her remarks reported by franceinfo on 2 October, then of a “tear-gas grenade launcher” (translated) in her statement of 3 October (franceinfo). The entry does not settle the matter. According to the family’s lawyer, quoted by 20 Minutes, the student has a double jaw fracture and has “all his upper teeth broken and a good number of lower teeth broken” (translated). According to the mother, interviewed by Le Parisien and quoted by 20 Minutes, her son was sitting calmly before the police officers intervened and she has filed a complaint.
On 29 September, franceinfo states that a video of the scene has been authenticated by France Télévisions; Amnesty International France, on 2 October, speaks of a video authenticated by Le Monde and considers that, in light of these images, none of the rules on the use of force was respected by the police officer (an assessment by a human-rights organisation, which is not a judicial finding). According to Le Parisien, quoted by franceinfo, law enforcement used tear gas before the scene. In a statement quoted by franceinfo, teachers at the lycée write that at 10:30 a.m. “the situation degenerated because of a disproportionate reaction by law enforcement” and that the student was “set upon by several officers, delivering repeated blows to him” before being hit by a projectile “fired at point-blank range” (translated). Le Nouvel Obs (01/10) describes a shot fired by the female police officer, whereas the Pontoise public prosecutor’s office and franceinfo’s description of the video speak of a second police officer: this discrepancy is not settled.
Version of the public prosecutor’s office, quoted by Actu17 (which also states that the student was taken to Pontoise hospital with broken teeth): the Pontoise public prosecutor states that, according to the initial findings and the examination of the images, the minor was falling to the ground and a second police officer used the launcher (what the prosecutor’s office says about the minor’s behaviour before his fall appears in the linked entry). A teacher present about ten metres away, quoted by France 3, considers the police reaction disproportionate.
Follow-up
A flagrante delicto investigation is entrusted to the IGPN (police internal affairs) for violence by a person holding public authority with use of a weapon (Actu17, 20 Minutes); the second investigation, opened in Cergy, belongs to the linked entry. The IGPN was seized the same day, which the Interior Minister confirmed on 30 September (TF1 Info). The Defender of Rights has taken up the case on its own initiative, announced on 1 October (franceinfo with AFP, 02/10; 20 Minutes): this self-referral leads to the opening of an investigation by this independent administrative authority. The Pontoise prosecutor indicated on the evening of 1 October that “the investigations are continuing” (translated) (franceinfo). In a statement of 10 October, the Defender of Rights writes that it decided, on 1 October, “to take up on its own initiative the events that occurred in Saint-Ouen-L’Aumône, where a 14-year-old child was injured in the face by a tear-gas grenade shot” (translated), that “the first steps necessary for the examination of the case file are currently under way” (translated) and that it has received 28 individual referrals since the start of the mobilisations; this is the only self-referral it mentions at that date.
On 6 October, the police officer who fired the shot was formally placed under investigation for “violence by a person holding public authority resulting in mutilation or permanent disability” (translated), a criminal charge punishable by fifteen years’ imprisonment according to the Pontoise prosecutor, and placed under judicial supervision; he is banned from working on the public highway (according to a judicial source, and not the total ban on practising announced at first) (Actu17, ICI). During his police custody, he said he fired “in the face of the resistance of the student, who kept coming into contact with his group” (translated) and because the student had kicked his female colleague in the upper leg and stretched an arm towards her helmet; the public prosecutor’s office rules out self-defence, the conditions not being met because of “the lack of proportionality in the use” (translated) of the launcher. His lawyer tells Actu17 that her client used an intermediate, non-lethal means, because of the danger felt for his colleague, and that he had to decide “in a split second in a particularly degraded context” (translated). According to the public prosecutor’s office, the student also has a fracture of the mandible that required an operation; his mother says he eats with a straw. The family, for its part, filed a complaint notably for “attempted intentional homicide” and “intentional violence with a weapon committed by persons holding public authority against a minor under fifteen” (translated); the formal investigation, however, concerns violence resulting in mutilation or permanent disability, with no mention of attempted homicide in the sources read (Actu17).
Blast, in its video of 29 September, gives the student’s age as fifteen and speaks of a grenade-launcher shot; the other sources read, including the family’s lawyer’s statement, give fourteen.
On 2 October, according to his lawyer quoted by franceinfo, the student is hospitalised and must undergo “an extremely heavy operation” (translated); she says he was standing “isolated” and was “set upon by police officers, who hit him” (translated), before a police officer “shoots him in the head from one metre away” (translated) (the family’s version; the public prosecutor’s office gives a different chronology). On 3 October, the lawyer announces a complaint for “attempted intentional homicide” and “intentional violence with a weapon committed by persons holding public authority against a minor under fifteen” (translated); according to this statement, the student was seriously wounded in the head “by a shot from a tear-gas grenade launcher” (translated); she specifies that “all of his upper teeth” are broken and that four lower teeth are missing (translated) (franceinfo, 03/10).