Lausanne was rocked by serious riots on Sunday evening, August 24th, following the death of a 17-year-old who crashed his stolen scooter while fleeing from police in the early hours of the morning.
The unrest, marked by arson, vandalism, and clashes with officers, is reminiscent of similar riots that have occurred in French cities in recent years.
According to the police, a patrol of Lausanne’s municipal force spotted the teenager riding a stolen scooter at around 3:45 a.m. When he noticed the police vehicle, he accelerated, heading the wrong way down a one-way street. Losing control, he struck the wall of a garage.
Despite resuscitation attempts by officers and paramedics, he died at the scene.
The boy, a Swiss national of migrant background living in Lausanne, had been riding a scooter reported stolen a day earlier. The public prosecutor of the canton of Vaud has launched a criminal investigation into the circumstances of the accident.
By evening, anger had spilt onto the streets. Around 100 masked youths gathered in the Prélaz district from 9:30 p.m., hurling fireworks at police, torching bins, and damaging a bus belonging to the Lausanne transport company.
At one point, some twenty young people chased a man while shouting, “He is a fascist!”
A local councillor for the right-wing, anti-immigration Swiss People’s Party, Thibault Schaller, said he, too, was attacked at the scene. In a post on his X account, Schaller said he was surrounded by ten to fifteen people who hit him from all sides. He managed to escape relatively unharmed but stressed that “we really need to reconquer this city.”
Police responded to the rioting by using tear gas and rubber bullets. Firefighters extinguished the blazes while officers from the city, the canton, and neighbouring communes worked together to bring the situation under control.
Video footage shared by Swiss media outlets showed burning containers, volleys of fireworks, and the wrecked bus. The disturbances continued for several hours before subsiding around midnight, though police maintained a watchful presence.
The violence is similar to the street riots that have erupted for many years in France, particularly in migrant-dominated suburbs. Two years ago, 17-year-old Nahel, of North African descent, was shot dead by a police officer after refusing to stop his car near Paris. That killing triggered days of chaos across France, with widespread looting, arson, and violent clashes between youths and the police.
