Police arrested two women in connection to an e-scooter accident that resulted in the fatal injury of a 31-year-old woman who was robbed as she lay in the street in Paris.
The incident took place earlier this month at the Pont au Change and saw two women riding an electric scooter, who were allegedly drunk at the time, drive into a 31-year-old Italian woman. Passersby are then believed to have robbed the victim as she laid in the street dying, while the women who hit her fled.
The victim, who has been named in reports as Italian citizen Miriam, was taken to a local hospital but died two days later, suffering a heart attack and a severe head injury from the incident.
On Thursday, police arrested the two women accused of hitting Miriam. Both face possible charges of hit and run and manslaughter, newspaper Le Parisien reports.
Investigators say that the home of the two women, who are both 25-year-old nurses, were being searched, and interviews with the suspects were being conducted. No arrests have been made for the alleged thefts that took place after the collision.
Originally from Tuscany, 31-year-old Miriam had been settled in France for over a decade. According to Le Figaro, friends left messages on her Facebook page following her death stating she had been “adored by all”.
Earlier this month, Le Figaro noted the growing problems with risky behaviour among e-scooter riders in parts of France, particularly that 49 per cent of users of the vehicles said they often drove them after having at least two alcoholic drinks, twice the proportion of regular motorists.
A further 45 per cent said they drove e-scooters while on illegal drugs, with just two per cent of motorists saying the same.
The death of 31-year-old Miriam is not the first involving e-scooters in France. In 2019, a 25-year-old man was killed in Bordeaux after hitting a car. It was the sixth death involving the vehicles since they were introduced in France in mid-2019.