On Friday 2 October 2026, in Montpellier, the prefect of Hérault has ordered the closure of several schools; high-school and university students from Paul-Valéry gather outside the Clemenceau lycée. The morning turns into a face-off: young people dressed in black fire mortars and throw projectiles, the police respond with tear gas (Le Poing, see the linked case).
In a statement on the days of 1 and 2 October, relayed by Le Poing, the Observatoire des libertés de Montpellier (OLM) reports, according to Le Poing, which sees in it “the most serious fact noted by the OLM” (translated), that a minor female student, who was standing motionless outside the school with other protesters, was seriously injured in the eye during a CDI charge without warning, with two facial fractures. Le Poing reports no testimony from the student or her relatives, no medical report, and no reaction from the prefecture or the public prosecutor’s office. The same source states that, at many sites, police officers and gendarmes, in uniform and in plain clothes, were not visibly wearing their RIO: this general finding by the observatory is not tied to a specific scene and is not retained here.
Midi Libre writes on 5 October that a 17-year-old female protester was seriously injured in one eye by the baton blow of a police officer of the departmental intervention company, outside the Clemenceau lycée: “several witnesses” (translated) indicate that she was in a static position, on the margins of a charge that led to an arrest, and the newspaper reports a “double fracture at the level of the orbital wall” (translated) (article read in part, subscribers-only; its headline speaks of a female high-school student, its text of a university student).
Hérault Tribune gathers her account on 6 October: she was taking part in the blockade “to support the high-school students” (translated); people who, she says, did not come from the lycée were throwing projectiles, the CRS repeatedly threatened to charge and a line of protesters formed to protect the high-school students; when a firecracker is thrown, the police officers “threw themselves on us” (translated); she receives shield blows to the ribs and then sees one of the two CRS officers “raise his baton and hit [her] in the face” (translated). She states: “I have two fractures under the eye and I’m afraid my sight will not be restored” (translated). She was treated in the emergency room and says the doctors are optimistic about the evolution of her vision; the outlet writes that the exact circumstances remain to be established.
Follow-up
She says she wants to file a complaint, has contacted a lawyer and is gathering testimonies (Hérault Tribune, 6 October). No complaint filed, investigation or referral to the IGPN (police internal affairs) is reported in the sources read as of 19 October, and no authority has spoken on this case.