A horrific video is circulating on social media showing a man brutally attacking a little girl and her caretaker as they stand at the doorway of a residence in Bordeaux, France.
The video, first uploaded to Twitter by French news outlet Info Bordeaux, shows a woman and a young girl standing on the door-step of a residential building. The two appear to be looking out at the street casually as cars pass, with the footage being caught by the door frame-mounted Nest home camera. But a man lingering nearby soon catches the eye of the adult woman, who seems concerned as he proceeds to aggressively close the distance between them.
The man was wearing shoes without laces, and seemed to be holding a number of bundled garments.
As the woman and child attempt to hastily retreat back into the residence and shut the door, the man lunges at them. He shoves his foot in the doorway to stop it from closing and then proceeds to rip it open and enter.
A few seconds later and after an apparent struggle off-camera, the man rips the woman and child out of the residence and throws them to the paved sidewalk.
The little girl appears to be crying and screaming as the adult woman is flattened on the ground, looking dazed for a moment. The stranger then takes hold of the young girl and throws her down the sidewalk. Before fleeing, the assailant grabs an object from the ground. The little girl is seen running back to the adult woman and helping her as she struggles to stand.
The exact relationship between the woman and the child has not yet been verified, though some sources have claimed that the woman is the child’s grandmother.
According to Info Bordeaux, the assailant was “well known” to police and has since been arrested for the assault.
Former right-wing French presidential candidate Eric Zemmour reacted to the video on Twitter. “How awful,” Zemmour said. “This is what they have done to our country. France, wake up.”
Only a day before the disturbing attack on the little girl and woman, the former Mayor of Bordeaux, Nicolas Florian, posted a video to his Twitter feed of a local meeting featuring elected Bordeaux councillors.
In the video, Françoise Frémy, the deputy mayor for the central La Bastide district, dismissed the concerns of the public regarding crime levels and safety on the streets of Bordeaux.
Frémy claimed that the local government had been trying to work with young people in the district to prevent crime, but that the problem was more “global” than just Bordeaux. In order to truly stop violent crime in the city, she suggested that they would need a “policeman on every street corner.”
Yet even that would not prevent violent crime and muggings, she said, which “happens to everyone,” including her. The issue is “too complicated” to solve in one stroke, Frémy argued.
