The 17-year-old boy shot dead during a police traffic stop in Nanterre on Tuesday was a “well-liked” only child raised by a single mother, who had been studying for an electrician’s certificate, according to French media.
Nahel M’s death has sparked violent unrest around France, with rioters on Wednesday setting public buildings ablaze, torching cars and clashing with police in cities from Lille to Toulouse and 150 people arrested.
Le Parisien said Nahel was still living with his mother, Mounia, in the Vieux-Pont neighbourhood of Nanterre, about 9 miles (15km) from central Paris, and in 2021 enrolled on a course leading to an electrical qualification at the lycée Louis Blériot in nearby Suresnes.
According to FranceInfo radio, he had previously opted to join a special class for pupils with behavioural or educational issues in order to avoid exclusion from his junior high school, and last April joined a community rugby project.
Jeff Puech, the president of the Ovale Citoyen association, which aims to help local youths on to the job market through sport, described Nahel as “a kid who really wanted to get on, to integrate professionally and socially”.
He was not “a kid who lived from drug deals or fell in with petty crime”, Puech told Le Parisien. Nahel played rugby league and was spoken of warmly by all who knew him at the club, Puech told FranceInfo, adding: “He did all he was asked. He had real potential.”
BFMTV reported that Nahel’s lawyers had said he was “well liked” locally, while his grandmother Nadia called him a “good, kind boy”. In a video released on social media, his mother described a close-knit relationship.
“On Tuesday he gave me a big kiss and said: ‘Mum, I love you,’” she said. “I told him: ‘I love you, take care.’ An hour later, what do they tell me? They’d shot my son. What will I do? He was my life, my best friend, my son. He was everything to me.”
A childhood friend, Sara, told RMC radio Nahel was “really not a bad guy. He was doing all he could to get on, he was so well brought up. Of all his friend group he was the nicest, kindest. Really, Nahel had good values.”
According to French media reports, he had recently abandoned his course and was earning a living as a delivery driver and working in a local fast-food shop. Local people said his deliveries were made by bike.
The public prosecutor Pascal Prache has said Nahel – who is too young to drive unaccompanied in France – was known to police for previously failing to comply with a traffic stop order.
French media, citing police sources, said Nahel had also been involved in several other previous run-ins with police, including over other driving incidents.
According to BFM and other media, he appeared before a youth court in September after failing to obey a traffic stop. More recently, he was arrested on Saturday for the same offence and told he would appear in youth court in September.
French media outlets said his name was on a police database, known as TAJ, used to record suspects’ and victims’ details during criminal and other inquiries. The fact that a name appears on the database is not evidence of criminal activity, lawyers have stressed. He had no formal criminal record.
“My client was 17, he was working, he was a delivery driver, and he was shot today,” the family’s lawyer, Yassine Bouzrou, said on Tuesday. “That’s all we know for sure. Being ‘known to police’ is meaningless. These files lack precision.”
