Ritchie Alexis
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on April 14, 2019 at 23:11
- 1 min read
- By Mahdia BENHAMLA
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| Age | 34 |
| Date injured | November 19, 2018 |
| Where | Saint-Paul (Reunion island) |
| Eye | Left |
| Medical certificate seen by AFP | Yes |
| Alleged | Rubber bullet |
| Plainte | Yes |
| Enquête administrative | No |
Ritchie Alexis, 34, did not want to speak to AFP directly. Here is his version of events, as told by his lawyer.
Why was he there?
A “well-respected” resident of Saint-Paul on Reunion island, Ritchie Alexis was asked by a friend to meet protesters to “tell them to calm down to protect the reputation of the area”, his lawyer Remy Boniface said.
What happened?
He had gone out in the morning to try to quell tensions between police and youths before coming home for lunch, Boniface said, before going back out around 4 o’clock. “Some young people were blocking a road,” Boniface said. Ritchie went to “ask them to calm down” when “without warning from the police, my client heard a first explosion, then a second. That’s when he was hit in the eye by a projectile.”
What is his life like now?
"He is very upset. He wants to know the truth. He isn’t angry, he admits that even the police can make mistakes and could have shot him by accident, but he wants the authorities to acknowledge they made a mistake,” his lawyer said.
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