PARIS (Reuters) -The French government on Thursday called for calm following the death of a 16-year-old boy whose motorbike collided with a police car on a road outside Paris.
Prosecutors said they were investigating police allegations that the teenager failed to stop while riding his motocross bike along the pavement and, as he fled, hit a police vehicle at a cross section.
They also said two police officers were in custody pending a manslaughter investigation. The teenager died in hospital from injuries he sustained in the collision.
Wednesday’s crash, which occurred in Elancourt in the Yvelines department west of the capital, happened just over two months after police shot and killed a 17-year-old of North African descent at a traffic stop in the Paris suburb of Nanterre.
That incident sparked five days of riots and looting across the country.
Government spokesman Olivier Veran said the investigations under way would determine the “exact circumstances” of Wednesday’s collision.
“Obviously I am calling for calm…. I am calling for restraint and careful consideration,” he said on France Inter radio.
“Regardless of how dramatic a situation is, it needs answers that we do not yet have.”
The death of the teenager, whose ethnicity had not been reported, occurred as France gears up to host the Rugby World Cup. The tournament kicks off on Friday when France play New Zealand at the Stade de France near Paris.
(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon, Alain Acco; Editing by Christina Fincher and John Stonestreet)
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