2023-12-16 06:03:00
The explosion of a pyrotechnic device injured several students on Friday in a school in Wavre, the King’s Prosecutor of Walloon Brabant told the Belga agency. Two suspects, students at this establishment, were arrested by the police.
The police intervened on Friday shortly before 2 p.m. at the Institut de la Providence, along rue de Nivelles, in the center of Wavre. A member of the school staff called them at 1:49 p.m. to report that an explosion had just occurred in a corridor in which students were waiting for classes to resume.
It appeared that a person threw a pyrotechnic device into a plastic bin which shattered. Ceiling tiles were displaced during the explosion.
According to initial information communicated by the prosecution, 13 victims were counted and most of those present were teenagers aged 12 and 13.
Four victims were able to return home, the other nine were taken care of by rescuers then dispatched to the Saint-Pierre hospitals in Ottignies, Delta in Auderghem and Saint-Luc in Woluwe-Saint-Lambert. Injured teenagers suffer minor burns to their hands or wrists, bruises or wounds that require stitching. An adult presents with abrasions and complains of tinnitus, as does a 16-year-old girl.
“The noise caused by the explosion would have caused tinnitus in several people, perhaps even more than those who were identified”specifies the Walloon Brabant prosecutor.
Paramedics and rescuers, eleven Wavrian police officers and scientists from the federal police laboratory were mobilized.
Two suspects were arrested and deprived of their liberty. They are a young girl born in 2005 and a young man, a minor born in 2006, both students at Providence.
According to our colleagues at the DH, the case will be taken to court. “In such a scenario, there is, for an adult person, referral to a criminal court for intentional assault and battery possibly resulting in incapacity, here probably of less than four months. In criminal law, an inability to follow the course is equivalent to an incapacity to work. It is an impediment to living one’s life normally.”explained criminal lawyer Henri Laquay who does not comment specifically on the case in Wavre. “With premeditation, the adult risks imprisonment of six months to three years and/or a fine of one hundred to five hundred multiplied by eight. A minor will be treated by a youth court. A priori, he would not risk confinement in an IPPJ only if there is a prior history.”
The Wavrien school was not evacuated following the incident and most classes resumed.
Wavre
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