“His condition has improved but still requires medical attention,” added Raphaël Cabral in the press release. At the time of the events, the Pontoise prosecutor’s office had told AFP that she risked retaining “severe neurological sequelae”.

On Friday August 5, around 9:15 p.m., the little girl was “playing tag” with an 11-year-old boy on an esplanade, in the Hauts Marcouville district of Pontoise, when they were hit by a biker who fled.

With a head trauma, the girl had been operated on at the Necker hospital in Paris. The boy, suffering from a tibia-fibula fracture, was hospitalized in Amiens.

The next day, in the early afternoon, the biker, a young man of 18, went to the police station with his lawyer and admitted the facts.

He was indicted and imprisoned on August 8 for “involuntary injuries resulting in total incapacity for work for more than three months” aggravated by two circumstances, the hit and run and the breach of security obligations.

“It is really time, through exemplary sanctions, to demonstrate that rodeos of this type, which can have absolutely dramatic consequences, are not a game, they are not fun, they are delinquency”, commented on BFMTV the mayor LR of Pontoise, Stéphanie Von Euw.

She also announced that the municipality had asked the social landlord present in the neighborhood to initiate eviction proceedings against the young man.

The drama has put this widespread but illegal phenomenon back in the spotlight. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin had asked for an “intensification of controls” throughout the national territory “to fight against these criminal acts”.

In the department of Val-d’Oise since the beginning of April, 534 interventions have been recorded for urban rodeos. 37 people were arrested and 34 motorcycles were seized, according to figures released in early August by the Departmental Directorate of Public Security (DDSP) of Val-d’Oise.

On June 8, a 19-year-old young man died after being hit by a motorcycle during an urban rodeo in Rennes.

A 2018 law strengthening the law against motorized rodeos provides for penalties of up to 5 years in prison for their perpetrators.