Melun : A 14-year-old dressed as a clown was arrested today near Paris for attempting to attack a woman, as a strange phenomenon of fake, evil clowns terrorising passers-by spreads in France, reports AFP.
Another teenager in the southern city of Montpellier was sentenced to four months in prison for hitting a passer-by 30 times with an iron bar on Saturday. The teen was also kitted out as a clown.
Complaints have poured in recently over “armed clowns” wreaking havoc in various parts of the country — some carrying pistols, knives or baseball bats — and police have detained several people over the violent trend. The phenomenon has even prompted anti-clown vigilantism, forcing police to step in to try and quell the hysteria by saying there have only been a few sightings of the grotesque pranksters. A woman who had just got out of her car in Chelles near Paris called the police, saying two clowns had attacked her, a source said. They escaped when a passer-by armed with a baseball bat tried to stop them, and one of the pranksters was subsequently detained when police spotted him, white make-up still all over his face. In a separate incident, people wearing the smiling, white masks associated with the Anonymous hacktivist collective attacked three youths at a station in Melun, also in the Paris suburbs, stealing their mobile phones, the police source added.
