A French Prosecutor Can't Say How a Boy Lost His Hand. The Mail Can.

A 15-year-old boy lost his hand near his school in Lens, northern France, on Monday, October 5, 2026. A grenade went off during a protest. How it reached his hand, nobody in charge will say yet.

The Daily Mail will. Its headline that day said the student had his hand blown off "while trying to throw stun grenade back at police."

No "police say." No "reportedly." The article repeats it flat. He picked the grenade up "intending to throw it back."

That version does exist. It comes from police sources, speaking to French reporters without giving their names. One told the French paper Le Figaro the boy was said to have picked the grenade up to throw it back. Le Figaro added that what exactly happened still had to be worked out.

The officials were more careful still. The local prosecutor said he couldn't yet say whether the boy picked the grenade up or whether it landed on him. France's education minister said he didn't know what had happened. The police watchdog has opened an investigation.

And there's a third version. The BBC reported the words of a girl who was said to be standing near him: "He didn't pick it up. I was there, I saw it."

We read the Mail's article on the evening of October 5. The girl wasn't in it. The prosecutor wasn't in it. The investigation wasn't in it.

The police sources' version was there. The words "police say" were not.

To be fair, the protests are real news. French teenagers have been out since late September over crumbling schools and missing teachers. Some protests turned violent, and schools were set on fire. The Mail reports that.

Further down, it also quotes a rights group that accuses the police of going too far against protesters, many of them minors. Credit for that.

In our view, the problem is the top line. The watchdog that investigates the police is looking at how this boy was hurt. An unofficial account from police sources became a British headline as plain fact.

Maybe the watchdog will find he did try to throw it back. Then that account holds up. But on Monday, nobody had established it.

When a child loses a hand, "police say" is two words. They cost nothing. The Mail left them out.