Cyclist who kneed girl, 5, onto floor hits back after losing legal battle

A cyclist who was filmed knocking a little girl onto the ground has spoken out after losing a legal battle against her father.

Jacques Davenne found himself at the centre of a social media storm after he was secretly filmed cycling down a snowy path in a Belgian nature reserve on Christmas Day 2020.

What started out as a peaceful ride quickly turned to chaos, after the cycling club president knocked over five-year-old Neia with his knee in front of both her parents.

What he didn't know was that Neia's father Patrick Mpasa was recording the whole thing and the footage would soon be shared all over the internet.

Mpasa said at the time he 'wouldn’t have made a big deal out of it had he just apologised' after he claimed Davenne shouted 'I called out, you just have to move' before speeding off.

The father said he didn't want a 'witch hunt', but inevitably that's exactly what happened.

Two court cases and a social media firestorm later, Davenne still insists he did nothing wrong, having rang his bell several times to get the child's attention.

When the case went to court for the first time, he was given a suspended sentence for involuntary assault due to negligence.

However, when it came to sentencing, the retiree was let off as the judge decided it was punishment enough to have faced criticism from all over the world after the video went viral. He was ordered to pay a symbolic €1 in compensation.

Since then, Davenne has sued Mpasa for defamation for having posted the video to the internet, claiming his privacy was impacted by the reaction and made him scared to leave the house due to threats.

Originally, the court ruled in favour of Davenne, ordering Mpasa to pay nearly £4,000, Metro reports.

Davenne said this was about how much the bike he hit Neia with cost him, which he claimed he could no longer use.

But now, the court of Liege has overturned that decision and ruled in favour of Neia's parents.

Davenne has been ordered to pay €2,040 (£1,700) in legal costs - and he's not happy.

"The issue I had was with my image being posted online, that wasn’t fair and social media can be a huge problem," he told the Daily Mail. "He had no right to do that."

The court overturned the case, calling it a freedom of expression which contributes to the debate between cyclists and pedestrians.

The five-year-old was knocked over (Newslfash)

Following the ruling, the cyclist has spoken out and has insisted he still believes he was not at fault over the incident.

"I did what any good cyclist does and rang my bell several times, but they obviously didn’t hear me, so I cycled past but as I did so I slipped and lost my balance slightly," he said.

"That’s when I knocked the little girl, I had put my leg out to balance myself, I didn’t realise I had hit her and she had fallen over as I had cycled past."

Davenne claims Mpasa chased after him and berated him, becoming aggressive and attempting to hit him, believing the cyclist had knocked his daughter over intentionally.