A 15-year-old boy is in a coma after he was severely beaten in a Paris neighbourhood last week. The incident has triggered a wave of outrage across France and abroad, with sports stars and celebrities expressing their outrage at the attack and support for the victim, reports RFI.
A video shared on social media shows the boy, identified only as Yuriy, being attacked by a mob of hooded men, who hit him repeatedly with a bat and then kicked him as he lay on the ground, in the Javel area in Paris’s 15th arrondissement.
Yuriy was walking home from school with a group of friends when they were attacked, his mother Nataliya Kruchenyk told BFMTV news channel. The others managed to run away, but Yuriy fell over and was left alone as the mob continued to beat him.
Police have launched an investigation into attempted intentional homicide.
“They had put him in a fire truck to take him to hospital when I arrived,” Kruchenyk told BFMTV. “He was in a horrible state. They fractured his skull, they broke his arm, a finger, his shoulder and his ribs.”
Kruchenyk called on witnesses to come forward so "that no more children would have to go through what he suffered".