On the evening of 3 October 2026, an X account posts the filmed testimony of a high-school student, her face blurred, with the overlaid text “the only thing that makes blockades dangerous is the police” (translated). In it, facing the camera, she describes the dispersal of a blockade.
“We are between 14 and 17 years old” (translated), she repeats: in their bags, pencil cases and pens; facing them, batons and tear-gas canisters. According to her, the police officers charged and gassed “everyone” (translated), not a few people who were “messing around” (translated); there was “smoke everywhere” (translated), young people were falling and could not get back up. “I’m asthmatic” (translated), she says: she could no longer breathe, thought she would die and claims she would have fainted had she not been helped. She shows her eyes, still irritated.
This testimony is published as she gives it. The quotations are taken from a transcript of the video.
Search for a dispersal with gas at the Paul-Éluard lycée in early October (4 October): none was found in the sources read. Europe 1 (29/09) describes at the Paul-Éluard lycée several charges by CRS riot police facing hundreds of students and tear-gas grenades fired after cobblestones were thrown and a mortar was fired, with at least two arrests: that is 29 September, not early October. L’Humanité (01/10) writes that the prefecture closed Paul-Éluard for the day of 1 October and that the gathering of Saint-Denis lycées that day was held at the Suger lycée in a rather joyful atmosphere, despite a large deployment of gendarmes and police officers; a Suger teacher recalls tear gas fired “one or two metres” from students on Monday (28 September). Le Parisien of 1 October runs a headline about students’ anger that “erupts in the face of CRS” in Saint-Denis, but the article could not be read. Nothing therefore makes it possible to date the testimony, or to link it to Paul-Éluard.
What is missing to confirm
- The place and date: she does not give them. The message’s keywords point to the Paul-Éluard lycée in Saint-Denis, but the same account used these keywords for a video filmed in Toulouse; the date retained here is that of publication.
- An independent source on this dispersal: media, authority, another witness. Tear gas is documented at Paul-Éluard on 29 September (Europe 1) and at Suger on 28 September (testimony of a teacher quoted by L’Humanité), but no source read links the testimony to either of these scenes.
- A medical report on her breathing difficulties.