Teen mortally stabbed in France after row sparked by TikTok rejection

MEAUX - A 17-year-old in France admitted to fatally stabbing a fellow teenager in a row said to have been provoked by girl refusing to accept him on TikTok, a prosecutor said Monday.

The adolescent appeared in court on Monday in Meaux, near Paris, where he was arraigned on a charge of premeditated murder and placed in custody pending another hearing on Thursday, local prosecutor Jean-Michel Bladier said in a statement.

The killing occurred Saturday in a camping site in the town of Villevaude, on the outskirts of Paris.

The prosecutor said the mortal chain of events apparently started with the suspect repeatedly being rejected as a TikTok contact by a girl.

A heated telephone call between the suspect and the girl allegedly took place on Saturday, during which another 17-year-old -- the boyfriend of a close friend of the girl -- grabbed the phone and challenged the suspect to a fight at the camping site.

Bladier said that teenaged boy was set upon by two individuals at the camping site, where he suffered a fatal stab wound to the chest.

The 17-year-old suspect, identified by eyewitnesses, was arrested Saturday night after he turned up at the emergency ward of a Paris suburban hospital with a knife wound on his hand he said he had caused by accident.

The prosecutor said the adolescent told investigators he had gone to the camping site, with a knife, "to show he wasn't afraid".

The suspect said he "lost his head" and did not intend to kill, Bladier said.

The suspect had a juvenile criminal record, for violence against an older relative and for weapons possession.

The prosecutor said a friend of the suspect, considered an accomplice at the camping site, had yet to be identified. - AFP