LONDON: The grandmother of Nahel Merzouk, the French teenager who was killed by a police officer on Tuesday, has appealed for the violent protests staged in his name to end, the Metro reported.
France has been hit by a wave of rioting since the 17-year-old, who came from an Algerian family, was shot dead at point-blank range during a traffic stop in Nanterre.
The killing, which was captured on video, has unleashed rage about police treatment of minorities.
Curfews were imposed and tens of thousands of officers deployed as angry rioters destroyed buildings and vehicles.
“I want it to stop everywhere,” Merzouk’s grandmother Nadia told French news channel BFM TV on Sunday.
“The people who are destroying, I tell them to stop! Let them not destroy the schools, the buses,” she said.
Nadia said she did not attend the march led by Merzouk’s mother Mounia on Thursday, because she did not want to leave the place where her grandson had died.
The procession sparked further violence on the streets of Nanterre, with several cars being overturned and set on fire.
Speaking of her family’s suffering over the past week, Nadia said: “It’s over, my daughter no longer has a life.”
Mounia earlier expressed her sorrow at the killing of her son, who she said loved playing rugby and worked as a pizza delivery boy.
Nadia said did not harbor any resentment toward the police as a whole and blamed only the officer who fired the shot for Merzouk’s death.
“I trust in justice,” she said.
In a rare criticism of law enforcement, French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday described the shooting as “inexcusable.”
