‘I’m suffocating’: French delivery driver’s last words echo George Floyd case

A French delivery driver who died after being arrested in Paris pleaded, “I’m suffocating” several times as police held him to the ground.

Footage has emerged of 42-year-old Cédric Chouviat saying he could not breathe seven times in 22 seconds as officers pinned him to the ground.

Four police officers are being questioned for “involuntary homicide” over the arrest near the Eiffel Tower in January that echoes the death of George Floyd in the US that has sparked worldwide protests and Black Lives Matter demonstrations.

After the videos were reported on Tuesday, Chouviat’s family appealed to president Emmanuel Macron to order the suspension of the four officers. They also demanded that the police be “permanently banned” from using the chokehold and prone restraint, in which a person is forced face down on to the ground to be handcuffed.

“We’re calling for calm. France isn’t the United States, but France is becoming like the United States,” William Bourdon, one of the Chouviat family’s lawyers, said at a press conference.

Arié Alimi, another family lawyer, added: “It’s the prone restraint and the chokehold that killed Cédric Chouviat. Today, everyone knows these techniques kill.”

Police said they stopped Chouviat on his scooter after claiming he was looking at his mobile phone and had a dirty licence plate. Officers say he was disrespectful and abusive and resisted arrest.

However, a report by the National Gendarmerie Institute for Criminal Research suggested the exchanges between the police and the delivery driver were “correct”, although officers may have felt he was being “provocative” or “defiant”.

Tapes examined by investigators suggest the situation turned after nine minutes and 44 seconds of exchanges in which Chouviat can be heard calling an officer a “fool” several times.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Cédric Chouviat was held in a chokehold, according to witnesses. Photograph: Soutiens pour Cédric

According to witnesses quoted by Le Monde, the officers held Chouviat, a father of five, in a chokehold, a restraint technique that was banned by the interior minister, Christophe Castaner, this month, then reinstated after complaints from police.

In a report on the incident by investigators, seen by Le Monde, the investigative website Mediapart and the news agency Agence France-Presse, an expert who analysed several video recordings of the arrest declared: “Apart from the arrest, we did not notice any flagrantly violent words or noises. The exchange is relatively civil, even if we can sense a form of ‘provocation’ or ‘defiance’ in (Chouviat’s) words.”

It adds: “At 11 minutes 16 seconds (Chouviat) tells the police officer that he’s a ‘fool’. The officer decides to arrest him. In the next 22 seconds we can hear different sounds we cannot identify. The arrested person says several times, ‘I’m suffocating.’. We can hear one of the police officers say, ‘All good, all good, handcuffs on.’”

Chouviat had a heart attack and was taken to hospital in a coma. He died two days later. A postmortem concluded that he had died from asphyxia, having sustained a “fracture of the larynx”.

The dead man’s father, Christian Chouviat, expressed the family’s “incomprehension” on Tuesday. “They gave him no chance of surviving,” he said. “When you hear your son saying, ‘I’m suffocating’ seven times, that’s hard.”

None of the police officers has been suspended. Laurent-Franck Lienard, a lawyer for three of them, told LCI they had not heard Chouviat’s last words and “had absolutely no idea” what he was saying.

Lienard said the arrested man had subjected police to “around 15 minutes of insults”, calling them “clowns”, “puppets” and “fools”. He said his clients had not used the chokehold.