A dangerous car chase on the Parisian ring road
In the night of Monday to Tuesday, around 11:30 pm, officers of the Anti-Crime Brigade (Bac) of Seine-Saint-Denis spotted a car, a BMW Series 1, driving at more than 200 km/h according to Le Parisien. The driving is “dangerous”, according to the account of a police source to the AFP. The Paris prosecutor’s office speaks of “frequent lane changes.” The vehicle was between Porte de Pantin and Porte des Lilas.
The police activated the flashing lights and tried to control the vehicle. The driver refused to obey, fled and headed towards Porte de Vincennes. A chase then begins. The police officers reportedly are “left behind.” This version is corroborated by surveillance video, according to a police source cited by Le Parisien.
It was at 11:45 pm that the police found the vehicle. It had hit a tree at Porte de Bagnolet, according to the same police source. Le Figaro indicates that the police were only 400 meters from the site when the accident occurred.
Four or three passengers?
The Paris prosecutor’s office confirms that the vehicle in question “hit an obstacle.” “Three people” were “found unconscious in the vehicle,” according to the public ministry.
Several police sources cited by Le Parisien and Franceinfo, however, mentioned four people on board. One person was reportedly seen by several witnesses, cited by the Parisian daily, “running away” after getting out of the car.
The accident report communicated by the Paris prosecutor’s office is as follows: one dead and two seriously injured. The death of the rear passenger, born in July 1998, according to the public ministry, was recorded shortly after midnight.
The driver’s license of the driver, born in October 2002, “was the subject of an administrative suspension by the prefecture in July 2023 for 4 months and 15 days. He is not known to justice,” the prosecutor’s office, cited by AFP, has stated. He was taken to the hospital with a “life-threatening prognosis” but it “no longer is” now, according to the public ministry.
A third passenger, who was at the front of the vehicle, was also taken to the hospital in a “serious condition,” but without a life-threatening prognosis, according to the police source.
According to several police sources cited by various media outlets, the injured were “multiply traumatized.”
According to Le Parisien, the three victims are young people from Saint-Ouen and Saint-Denis.
The IGPN was not seized
An investigation has been opened and entrusted to the judicial accident investigation service, the prosecutor’s office also said, specifying that the “preliminary investigations seek to specify the circumstances of the accident.”
This investigation focuses on the offenses of “aggravated involuntary manslaughter,” “aggravated involuntary injury,” and “failure to comply directly exposing others to a risk of death.”
The IGPN, the police watchdog, has not been seized of the investigation at this stage, as is the case when police officers are suspected of being involved in a case.
