We see two police officers on the side of the vehicle, pointing their guns at the driver. One of them shoots him as the vehicle starts again. The car then crashed into a concrete block, a few dozen meters further on.
The police maintained that they were in danger of death because they were trapped between the car and a wall. Witnesses said they heard the police threatening the teenager. The two other passengers in the car, aged 14 and 17 at the time of the incident, claimed that Nahel had been hit with a baton on the arms.
The yellow car they were in at the time of the incident was transported by a tow truck on Sunday near the place where the teenager was killed, while a similar vehicle was driven to carry out the reconstruction, carried out under heavy police protection .
Gendarmes and police officers did not react when detonations rang out in the afternoon, probably necessary to reproduce the scene.
A dozen law enforcement trucks and barriers had been prepositioned to prevent access to the area, police officers had been deployed on the neighborhood’s rooftops and a drone flew over the scene, journalists from the AFP.
Behind the significant deployment to keep journalists and onlookers at bay and secure the scene, the section of road where the police officer shot Nahel was hidden from view by metal barricades.
– Hooded police officers –
The two police officers who intervened during the tragedy were hooded to hide their identities. “My client is very threatened, there is no question of us seeing his face, even during proceedings,” explained the defendant’s lawyer, Me Laurent-Franck Liénard, on France Inter.
In the presence of their lawyers, the police officer responsible for the shooting, the colleague who accompanied him and several witnesses were questioned on the spot by the investigating judges, keen to establish whether Brigadier Florian M., indicted for intentional homicide , was in mortal danger when the shot was fired.
“It went well,” commented Me Nabil Boudi, lawyer for Nahel’s mother, leaving the scene of the reconstruction, without making any further comments.
Me Liénard also left the place without speaking.
“For the first time, all parties will be confronted with their testimony at the crime scene, it is a strong moment,” Mr. Boudi stressed to AFP earlier in the week.
Present near the device, Nahel’s mother did not want to speak to the media.
Not far from this busy intersection, certain buildings still bear the scars of the nights of riots which followed the death of the 17-year-old teenager.
Schools, courts and other public buildings attacked, stores looted: damage estimated at one billion euros was recorded across the country, according to a Senate report.
Florian M., a police motorcyclist aged 38 at the time of the events, was placed in pre-trial detention for five months. He was released and placed under judicial supervision in November after several requests from his counsel.
