Cyclist who kneed a five-year-old girl to the floor on Christmas Day for blocking his path successfully sues her father for sharing the viral footage

A Belgian cyclist who went viral after he was filmed kneeling a little girl and knocking her to the ground as he rode past her has won a lawsuit against her father for posting the footage online.

A court will determine in April next year how much compensation he is entitled to after he successfully argued that he had been defamed. He previously demanded €4,500 – approximately the price of his bicycle.

The footage was filmed by five-year-old Neia’s father, Patrick Mpasa, during their family walk in a nature reserve in Baraque Michel, Liège province, on Christmas Day 2020.

The cyclist was initially taken to court in Verviers for putting the child on his knees, but was subsequently given a suspended sentence because he had received sufficient criticism on social media. He was ordered to pay the girl’s family a meager 1 euro in damages.

The video shows him bumping into the boy, causing her to fall over.

But the 62-year-old cyclist – reportedly the father and grandfather of seven grandchildren, who has not been publicly named – sued Mpasa for defamation.

In the video, the five-year-old girl is seen walking along the snow-covered path next to her mother as the cyclist approaches them from behind.

Just as he rides next to the girl, he extends his knee, hitting the little girl and knocking her to the ground before continuing on his way undisturbed.

The family believed it was not an accident as the man did not stop to check if the girl was okay and continued cycling along the path.

However, the court ruled that the cyclist was free to go because he had received sufficient criticism about the incident on social media.

But the story didn’t end there. Almost a year after the incident, the cyclist went to court again to sue the girl’s father for defamation.

He did that on the ground that the reactions to the video made him feel so threatened by the public that he was afraid to leave his own home.

Jacques Englebert, Mpasa’s lawyer, said at the time in response to the defamation lawsuit: ‘We have the right to express ourselves. We have the right to post or have a video posted on the Internet. In this case we must consider whether we have exceeded the limits of this freedom of expression.’

The cyclist continues cycling while the girl is knocked to the ground in Baraque Miche

However, Englebert’s arguments were not strong enough in court, and Mpasa has lost the case and could be ordered to pay damages.

The footage, which went viral online, showed the cyclist emerging from a bend in the snowy road before crashing into the road. young girl and dropped her in the snow.

Furious father Patrick Mpasa, who had filmed his wife and two children, later shared the video on social media asking if people agreed he was right to complain to the police.

Mpasa said he chased the man and managed to get him to stop, but the cyclist had shown no remorse.

“He explained what had happened and asked us to withdraw the police complaint, but he showed no remorse and did not apologize,” Mpasa said at the time.

‘A lot of people say to me that I should have hit him, but I don’t agree and in any case I was in front of my children which would have made things worse for them. I don’t want a witch hunt either, I just want him to apologize.”

Soon the family has reported the incident to the police and both the cyclist and any witnesses have been asked to come forward. The cyclist was reported to have reported by contacting the child’s parents.

During a court hearing on February 3, 2021, the cyclist claimed that the incident happened because he had tried to keep his balance.

He said: ‘As I was driving close to the girl I felt my back wheel slide. To avoid a fall, I balanced myself with a movement of my knee. I felt like I might have hit the girl, but I didn’t immediately realize she had fallen over.’

But the prosecutor has disputed his explanation seemed highly unlikely.

The cyclist came around a bend in the snowy road before crashing into the young girl, causing her to fall into the snow.

“He was simply annoyed by the people on the path he had to avoid all the time,” they said. ‘Out of sheer annoyance he ‘knee-punched’ the child because for the umpteenth time there was an obstacle in the way.’

The local cyclists’ association described the man’s behavior as ‘unacceptable’, but the The judge opted for a lenient treatment, arguing that the man had no intention of harming the girl, that it was a minor incident and that he had already been criticized on social media.

The judge went on to say that the cyclist had already been in custody for some time when he was arrested ruled that the unnamed man must pay the girl’s family a symbolic €1 (86p) in compensation for the incident.

While the cyclist had been given a prison sentence of up to one year, the court decided to give him a suspended sentence, meaning that he will not receive any punishment for his actions as long as he does not reoffend.