Youth and police clash in Lausanne after fatal scooter accident

Burning rubbish bins and damage to property in Lausanne Keystone-SDA

A gathering of young people got out of hand in Lausanne on Sunday evening. Pyrotechnics were thrown at the police, rubbish bins were set on fire and a bus was damaged. Calm returned after midnight, according to the police.

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The emergency services partially withdrew “after several hours of violence”, as the Vaud cantonal police announced on Platform X on Monday night. However, surveillance will be maintained.

According to the police, around one hundred youths had previously gathered in the Prélaz district from 9:30pm. According to the press release, masked youths targeted the police with pyrotechnic objects. The fire brigade was deployed to extinguish the various sources of fire.

Images circulated on social networks and published by the newspaper 24 Heures on its website showed overturned rubbish containers in the street and burning rubbish on the carriageway. A damaged bus belonging to the Lausanne transport company TL was also visible.

Fatal accident while fleeing from police

The police assumed that the youths had probably gathered after learning of the death of a 17-year-old. He had died in a scooter accident in Lausanne early on Sunday morning. He had crashed heavily into a wall while fleeing from a police patrol.

The scooter had been reported stolen, according to the Vaud cantonal police. A police car followed the 17-year-old Swiss citizen, who lives in Lausanne, with its blue lights flashing, at a distance of more than one hundred metres.

According to initial investigations, the scooter driver lost control of the vehicle when he drove over a speed bump on a road with a speed limit of 30 kilometres per hour. According to the police, the public prosecutor’s office of the canton of Vaud opened a criminal investigation.

A similar case had already occurred in Lausanne at the beginning of June: A 14-year-old girl had a serious fall on her motorbike when she tried to evade a police check. The teenager was seriously injured and taken to the Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV), where she subsequently succumbed to her injuries.

Translated from German by DeepL/jdp

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