Who was Nahel M., the 17-year-old whose death by police shot sparked a violent wave of protests in France

Nahel M.’s death from police gunfire on Tuesday sparked riots in cities across France, as well as in Nanterre, the city west of Paris where she died.

Authorities say 667 people were arrested in protests across the country on Thursday, with protesters throwing objects and fireworks at police, setting fire to cars and street furniture.

Nahel M., 17, was an only child raised by her mother, worked as a food delivery boy and played rugby.

His educational process was described as “chaotic”. He enrolled at a university in Suresnes, not far from where he lived, to train as an electrician.

Those who knew him confirm that he was very popular in Nanterrewhere he lived with his mother, Mounia, and apparently never knew his father.

His attendance record in college was poor. But he had no criminal record.

On the day of the incident, he gave his mother a big kiss before going to work and told her, “I love you, mom.”

Shortly after 9 a.m., he was fatally shot in the chest, at point-blank range, behind the wheel of a Mercedes car for fleeing during a police check.

The policeman who killed him He was charged with manslaughter on Thursday and through his lawyer, he apologized to the young man’s family, assuring that he was “devastated”.

“What am I going to do now?” asked his mother, who led a massive protest demonstration on Thursday. “I devoted everything to it,” he said. “I only have one, I don’t have ten [hijos]. He was my life, my best friend.”

His grandmother spoke of him as a “good and kind boy.”

“Refusing to stop doesn’t give you a license to kill”said Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure. “All the children of the Republic are entitled to justice.”

Between ‘rugby’ and professional training

Nahel has played for the club for the past three years rugby Pirates of Nanterre, and was part of an integration program for young people with difficulties at school, run by an association called Ovale Citoyen.

The program was designed to allow people from underprivileged areas to participate in training programs, and Nahel trained to become an electrician.

Jeff Puech, president of Oval Citoyen, was one of the adults who knew him best locally. She had only seen him a few days ago and called him a “man who has the rugby move forward.”

“He was someone who had the will to fit in socially and professionally, not a man who dealt drugs or had fun [actos de] youth crime”said Puech le Paris.

Puech praised the “exemplary attitude” of the teenager, far from the unpleasant image that the young man has projected on social networks.

She had met Nahel while living with her mother in Nanterre, a suburb of Vieux-Pont, before they moved into a tenement in the Pablo Picasso project.

The stigma of minorities

It has not gone unnoticed that his family is of Algerian origin: “May Allah have mercy on him,” read a banner on the Paris ring road in front of the Parc des Princes stadium.

“Police brutality happens every day, especially if you’re Arab or black,” said a young man in another French city calling for justice for Nahel.

But the family’s lawyer, Yassine Bouzrou, said this is not about racism, but about justice.

“We have a law and a judicial system that protects the police and creates a culture of impunity in France”he said to the BBC.

Nahel had been subject to five police checks since 2021.

Last weekend he was reportedly taken into custody for refusing to cooperate and is due to appear in juvenile court in September.

Many of the problems he faced with the authorities had to do with cars.

The riots that caused his death remind many in France of the 2005 protests when two teenagers, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré, were electrocuted when they ran from police after a football match and crashed into an electrical substation in Clichy-sous-Bois . , a suburb of Paris.

“It could have been me, it could have been my little brother,” a Clichy teen named Mohammed told the French website. media section on the death of Nahel M.