Tragedy Strikes Paris Suburb: 14-Year-Old Drowns in Forbidden Canal, Sparking Community Grief and Water Safety Concerns

Mohamed will not return alive from the mouth of the Chelles and Marne canal. Arriving at the level of the port of Neuilly, other teenagers and he used a wooden footbridge to jump into the water, reports Le Parisien. "They were a group of six, all 14 years old," says the mayor of the municipality, Zartoshte Bakhtiari (DVD). They passed barriers and swam in a prohibited area." But Mohamed, a 9th grade student, could not swim. Despite 30 minutes of cardiac massage, the firefighters could not save the teenager. After about 10 minutes underwater, he drowned.

His death plunges his Prunais college, the Dauer school where his brother and sister go, but also the town hall of Villiers-sur-Marne, where swimming lessons are one of the priorities, into emotion. "Seeing a 14-year-old lying like that, under a blanket, is not in the order of things," laments Bakhtiari. "He couldn’t swim, it looks like a teenage challenge that ends in tragedy," sighs a neighborhood resident who knows the family. In the college, this death is the subject of all conversations. "The children are very shocked, as are the teachers and supervisors, they talked about the young boy all day," a parent said on Monday evening.

Saddened, Mohamed’s father wants to raise awareness among all parents in the municipality. "My son left too fast, in two minutes. He was supposed to go play football at the stadium with his friends," he specifies. "Be careful with your children. There are a lot of teenagers who come to swim in secret, so really be careful with your children," he advises, in response to a Facebook post mentioning the boy’s death. The emergency medical service set up a psychological support unit on Monday, June 16, for Mohamed’s friends, who were unable to save him.

This death comes less than two weeks before the opening of secure sites along the Marne River. Four bathing sites should open this summer, including two as early as June 28, in Joinville-le-Pont and Maisons-Alfort. "I sincerely hope that supervised bathing will meet the desire to cool off, without the risks," says Marie-France Parrain, mayor (LR) of Maisons-Alfort, who had another meeting on Monday evening with the police station and the sub-prefecture of Nogent to discuss security around the Marne. The permanent presence of people to supervise the supervised bathing should deter teenagers from jumping from the nearby footbridge.