No conviction for man who sent girl sprawling in Hautes Fagnes

The man who knocked a child over with his knee in the Hautes Fagnes region on Christmas will not be sanctioned by the court. The 61-year-old man became infamous on both social and professional media when a video was released of the incident.

On the morning of Christmas Day, the five-year-old girl and her family had taken to the trails in the Liège region to enjoy the snowfall. The cyclist was passing the family and stuck out his knee, which hit the child, sending her tumbling.

The entire event was caught on video, which quickly went viral. The family and Verviers prosecutor were asking for help from the public in identifying the man. In the end, he turned himself in to police.

The cyclist’s story has always been that he did not purposefully knock the girl down with his knee but rather felt his back tyre slipping and so was keeping his balance by moving his leg. “I felt that I had touched the little girl, but I didn't immediately realise that she had fallen,” he told the court last month.

The girl’s father stopped the man and started shouting at him. “I apologised and told him I hadn’t seen her,” the man testified. “He was threatening me, so I continued on my way when I saw that the little one had got up and was not injured.”

The prosecutor is not convinced that the man did not willfully push the girl out of the way, while the parents were angry that he did not slow down in the presence of pedestrians on the path.

The court recognised that the cyclist did not mean to inflict any harm to another person but that he indeed showed poor judgement in such conditions, which resulted in a movement that sent someone sprawling.

The court ruled that the man’s culpability in causing the girl to fall had been proven, but that he would receive no sanction – except for a symbolic €1 in damages paid to the family, which they had requested.