The investigation is progressing in the case of the police officer injured in the Loire.
Six young people including a minor were indicted Friday evening after one of them seriously injured a policeman on duty, throwing a bottle at his head in Rive-de-Gier (Loire) on the night of 13 to May 14, said the prosecution of Saint-Etienne.
Among the latter, arrested Wednesday at dawn, a 21-year-old inhabitant of Saint-Chamond (Loire), who was imprisoned, and five young people from Rive-de-Gier, including a 17-year-old minor, who were placed under judicial control.
They are all prosecuted "for willful injuries to a person holding public authority, with a weapon and in a meeting, resulting in an ITT of more than eight days", facts punishable by 10 years' imprisonment.
Two other young men, who had also been arrested, were for their part exonerated.
More than 80 police officers, including those of the search and intervention brigade of the judicial police and those of two Raid branches, had been mobilized for the arrests of suspects, carried out not only in Rive-de-Gier and Saint-Chamond but also in Givors (Rhône).
An "unacceptable aggression"
The facts date back to the night of May 13 to 14, during an intervention by a crew of three police officers for nighttime noise.
Shortly after midnight in a popular district of Rive-de-Gier, the victim, a 51-year-old police sergeant from the Saint-Chamond police station, had received from one of the accused "a bottle of vodka in glass' to the head.
He had lost consciousness and collapsed to the ground in a street of this town in the Saint-Etienne agglomeration.
Taken to the Saint-Etienne University Hospital for surgery, he was placed in an artificial coma for a few hours.
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Released from the hospital a week ago, the civil servant, father of two, benefits for the moment from a total interruption of work (ITT) of 30 days but should not however return to work for several months. The investigation has not yet made it possible to know who precisely launched the projectile, added the prosecution on Friday evening. Vincent Bony, the PCF mayor of Rive-de-Gier, had “strongly condemned this unacceptable aggression”. For his part, the Minister of the Interior, Gerald Darmanin, had given “all his support” to the injured and to his colleagues.