“The magic of Christmas” turned into a fiasco this Saturday in Maisons-Alfort (Val-de-Marne), for several teenage girls. While they were enjoying the party village set up in the city this Saturday, some complained of having been victims of touching. A man was finally arrested at the end of the day thanks to the intervention of a fairground worker.
These “frictions committed in the crowd”, according to a police source, began in the afternoon before stopping for a certain time. But at 7:30 p.m., at 118, avenue du Général-de-Gaulle, at the exit of the city hall park, the suspect was active again. He is spotted by a showman while cornering a young girl. “He held her by the shoulder,” reports a source close to the investigation. The immediate intervention of the manager of the Ferris wheel, who witnessed the scene, made it possible to stop the attack and put the man suspected of several touchings during the day to flight.
“I acted as I would have done to defend my daughter,” the showman reported this Sunday, at the foot of his old-style Ferris wheel, 18 m high. The teenagers assure that he had already bored them in the afternoon. The man looked like a coward, he reeked of alcohol and didn't seem lucid. »
The young victims, shocked, returned home and have not yet filed a complaint against this attacker. Equipped with a precise description, the police were able to find him in the neighborhood and quickly arrest him. According to our information, he is homeless, already known to the police for drug use and exhibitionism. He was placed in police custody at the Maisons-Alfort police station, responsible for the investigation.
This Saturday evening, the festive atmosphere was interrupted during the police intervention, but this Sunday, while the police reinforced their presence on the scene, the families returned, most of them without having any knowledge of the facts from the day before. “We like getting together near the Ferris wheel with friends. It won’t change our habits,” says a group of young people. The funfair will last until January 8.
