Man Dies After Police Check in Béziers, France Amid Curfew Enforcement

According to prosecutor Raphaël Balland, the municipal police officers had carried out his check around 10:20 pm on Wednesday, April 8, 2020, in the streets of Béziers, where a curfew is in effect from 9 pm. Mohamed, a man convicted eight times since 2005, died after "more than three quarters of an hour of resuscitation attempts in the premises of the Béziers police station".

The three police officers heard in this case said that the thirty-year-old had "refused the check", reports Le Soir. According to them, he had adopted a "very aggressive behavior" and "resisted for a long time and strongly" to his arrest. The police officers said it would have been difficult to handcuff him and "to get him into the back of their vehicle while keeping him on his stomach".

"A municipal police officer is said to have then sat on the buttocks of the individual, still very excited, in order to hold him until he was taken to the police station, the prosecutor relates. [...] He would have calmed down during the short transport, the three police officers claiming to have heard him snoring, leaving them to think that he had fallen asleep. [...] But on their arrival in the courtyard of the police station, the arrested individual was unconscious".

On Friday, an autopsy took place in Montpellier, the results of which are not yet known. For now, the toxicological investigations continue.