“Nothing justifies violence,” he said. “Vincent Jeanbrun has our support for these unacceptable and unspeakable acts and the response will be commensurate with these acts of violence.”
The attack on the mayor’s family shocked France and, along with public appeals from relatives of the 17-year-old, identified by police as Nahel, may have played an important role in quelling some of the worst acts of political violence in the last times.
Nahel’s grandmother appealed for calm on Sunday, saying rioters were using her death as an excuse to wreak havoc.
“I tell them to stop. It is the mothers who take the buses, it is the mothers who walk outside. We should calm things down, we don’t want them to break things,” the woman identified only as Nadia told French television BFM. “Nahel is dead, that’s all there is.”
Nahel, of Algerian descent, was killed by a single shot by a police officer during a traffic stop Tuesday morning in the Paris suburb of Nanterre. The officer accused of the murder was given a preliminary charge of voluntary manslaughter.
Prosecutors said Nahel had committed a series of traffic violations and drove through crosswalks to evade police, but was forced to stop by heavy traffic, allowing officers to approach the car.
Footage taken by bystanders showed two police officers leaning out the driver’s side window of their yellow Mercedes, one of whom appeared to be shooting as the vehicle drove away. The car crashed into a nearby utility pole, and prosecutors said the driver died at the scene.
The legal team representing his family has not said whether it believes race was a factor in the shooting, which has sparked simmering tensions between the French state and many young people with immigrant roots who say it routinely discriminates against them.
Since his death on June 27, Nahel’s friends and family described him as a generous and kind young man who had never been given to violence.
“Everyone told her oui oui, because she said yes to everything,” said Anais, who described herself as Nahel’s cousin’s best friend and a close companion in her youth.
“He was a young man like everyone else,” he told NBC News in an interview last Thursday night.
