Fifteen-year-old Ukrainian Yuriy Kruchenyk was brutally beaten up by a group of 10 people in downtown Paris on Jan. 15.
The news, however, became public only over a week later after the video of the attack from the surveillance cameras was released on social media.
The teenager has been hospitalized with multiple injuries.
The incident occurred at around 6:30 p.m. when Kruchenyk and four friends were on the way from college. Everyone but Kruchenyk managed to escape the attack.
In a comment to the Hromadske news outlet, the teenager’s mother, Nataliia Kruchenyk-Farhat, said her son couldn’t run away because he slipped and fell down.
The published video shows Kruchenyk lying on the ground while being violently beaten by the group. Some of the attackers used iron truncheons as weapons.
According to the France Info media outlet, Kruchenyk received multiple injuries including several severe skull fractures, a cerebral contusion, a broken nose, several thigh wounds and a broken finger.
Kruchenyk was hospitalized soon after the assault. He underwent surgery and was put into a medically induced coma, France Info reports. The teenager started to gradually wake up from a coma on Jan. 24, his mother told the French news site BFM TV, but his condition is still unstable.
The video of the attack from the surveillance cameras shows Ukrainian Yuriy Kruchenyk, 15, being violently beaten up by a group of people in Paris on Jan. 15, 2021. (Courtesy)
According to France Info, French prosecutors have opened a criminal case into a murder attempt. The outlet says that an advisor of French President Emmanuel Macron reached out to the teenager’s family.
The Ukrainian Embassy in Paris is in touch with the French law enforcement, Ambassador of Ukraine to France, Vadym Omelchenko, wrote on Twitter on Jan. 21. The Ukrainian diplomats have also contacted Kruchenyk’s.
“I keep the matter under personal control,” Omelchenko said on Twitter.
Oleg Nikolaenko, Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman said in a comment to the Ukrinform news agency that the Ukrainian Embassy sent some official request to the Paris Prosecutor’s Office regarding the attack.
According to Nikolaenko, Kruchenyk has become a victim of a conflict between groups of teenagers. Several French media outlets also wrote that the area where the accident occurred is a frequent setting for gang clashes.
BFM TV says there’s no evidence that Kruchenyk had any connection to the gangs. His mother says that Kruchenyk is a good student who gets along with people well.
As reported by Ukrainian Holos Karpat news site, Kruchenyk-Farhat and her son moved to France nearly 10 years ago from Uzhgorod, a Ukrainian city of 112,000 located some 800 kilometers west of Kyiv.
The attack sparked outrage in France. Many social media users share posts about Kruchenko using the #JusticeForYuriy and #JusticePourYuriy hashtags.
Some members of the Ukrainian diaspora in Paris announced a reward of 15,000 euros to those who would help find the perpetrators.
Meanwhile, multiple French officials and celebrities have expressed their support for Kruchenyk and his family, demanding justice in the case. Among them are Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, star French soccer player Antoine Griezmann, Spanish soccer legend Iker Casillas, French actor Omar Sy and others.
