Europe

‘Police shot at us deliberately’: Friend of French woman who lost eye in Yellow Vest clashes to RT

14/12/2018

13 Dec, 2018

French police put lives at risk during Yellow Vest protests, RT heard. A friend of a woman who lost her eye at a rally says police was targeting bystanders deliberately, while a reporter claims her helmet was confiscated.

A 20-year-old student, identified as Fiorina, came to Paris for a “Yellow Vest” rally last weekend, Maxime Jacob, the woman’s friend, told RT France. “I was around when we were at Champs Elysees. At around 12am we asked gendarmes to let us leave the place but they were ordered not to allow anyone out.”

At some point, violent rioters attacked a store nearby, setting protective shutters on fire. Suddenly, riot police began dispersing the crowd so that fire brigades could make it to the site. “We were on the left, very far away [from there],” Jacob explained, saying he and Fiorina were pushed back to a police barricade.

But, he claims, police fired shots on both sides regardless of where the arsonists were. “And then, during another attack, an anti-riot grenade exploded several meters away from me,” he recalled. “Seconds later, Fiorina was hit and she fell to the ground.”

Jacob believes his friend wasn’t hit accidentally.

There were multiple shots and they deliberately fired towards civilians.

According to French media, the projectile that injured Fiorina’s eye could have been fired from a Flash-Ball, a non-lethal weapon developed by a French firm as an alternative to other, more intrusive tools like rubber bullets or batons. The Flash-Ball can use a range of ammunition, but a soft 44mm rubber ball is the most common one.