In the French city of Grenoble, two “youths” on a scooter tried to pass a bus on the right while they were fleeing from the police. The bus was on a bridge at the time. When the driver moved right to make way for the police, the poor mischievous youngsters were squashed between the bus and the wall of the bridge.

Needless to say, the local culture-enricher community in Grenoble took severe umbrage over the actions of the infidel bus driver and the infidel police.

Many thanks to Ava Lon for the translating this police press conference, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Video transcript:

00:29 Could you just explain to us what brought the police officers around?

00:33 Last night around 10:30 pm,

00:37 on the Catane bridge, an accident

00:41 occurred between a bus and a scooter

00:45 occupied by two people. The scooter

00:49 was stuck between the bus and the barrier of the bridge

00:53 and the two youths, who were on this scooter, one youth 17 years old and one 19 years old,

00:57 were killed in this accident.

01:01 It so happens that this scooter and its passengers were noticed

01:05 about ten minutes earlier by several

01:09 police vehicles, whose attention was attracted by

01:13 the fact that this scooter was circulating at night, without lights, with no license plate

01:18 so it was, as the police officers call it, “de-licensed”. That the passengers

01:22 were — additionally — without helmets. So they [the police]

01:26 asked the scooter to stop, which it didn’t do, so they followed it,

01:30 because they were simply doing their job. They were following it, keeping distance,

01:34 so they weren’t tailgating it, and — specifically — there was no shock between

01:38 the police vehicle and the scooter, since

01:43 the cause of the accident, it’s that, in fact, at some point —

01:47 it was explained to us perfectly by the bus driver — at some point the driver saw a scooter

01:51 in his rearview mirror and a police vehicle behind and he decided to move to the right

01:55 in order lot let the scooter and the police pass on the left.

01:59 However, the scooter decided not to pass on the left of the bus,

02:03 but to pass on the right of the bus [illegal in Europe], and there he got trapped between

02:07 the right side of the bus and the bridge barrier. Voilà. This is the cause of death.

02:11 The police were behind, but not closely behind,

02:15 and their speed was relatively reasonable, as a matter of fact. Voilà, what we do know

02:19 for now? What is important to specify as well is that we want to

02:23 shed all the light on this accident where two people got killed,

02:27 that tomorrow morning I’ll open an investigation, I’ll refer the matter

02:31 to the investigating judge, in order to find

02:35 a perfect picture of the situation, of this accident.

02:39 I’m also calling for witnesses, because perhaps there are people who saw

02:44 the events, perhaps there are people who recorded the events. Nowadays is totally possible,

02:48 so [we ask that] they contact us, that they call the police, that they go to the police station,

02:52 and that they help us to understand better what happened, even though we know already

02:56 very clearly and precisely the circumstances, well, the causes

03:00 of the accident: the bus that turned to the right and which therefore trapped

03:04 the scooter between him and the barrier,

03:08 with both youths. —So today you do make a link between the tensions, the riots

03:12 happening a couple of hours later in the Mistral neighborhood [in Grenoble]?

03:16 —Well, this accident happened in the area of the Mistral neighborhood, where the youths

03:20 came from, who lived in that neighborhood. The scooter that was followed by the police

03:25 was leaving the neighborhood, so when the police officers intervened just after

03:29 the accident, tensions developed rapidly, which the youths who

03:33 arrived at the [accident] site, who took the police officers to task who were doing their job,

03:37 who called the rescue services, and who were doing their job on the report of the facts.

03:41 So it was rather difficult for the police officers on the site

03:45 and later at night, true, there were a number of incidents in the Mistral neighborhood.

03:49 A nursing school in this neighborhood

03:53 was partially set on fire; the lobby was

03:57 was apparently destroyed, and a next door building was set on fire as well.

04:01 Do you fear a new chapter, a new event tonight in the Mistral neighborhood?

04:06 We are extremely vigilant, in any case. We all know that those are things that

04:10 could happen. I insisted therefore on meeting the family

04:14 for more than one hour with Madame Director of Public Security,

04:18 before seeing you, so they would learn from me, from us, what had happened,

04:22 what we knew about the accident today, and that they wouldn’t

04:26 learn it from the media and that they would find out about it from the best source possible.