A man was struck and killed at around 6.15am by a car travelling east toward Lausanne not far from the turnoff for Coppet in the canton of Vaud, cantonal police said.

The victim appears to to have been an 18-year-old man who was involved in an argument with the driver of a taxi he was traveling in, police said in a news release.

The driver of the cab, heading to Geneva, stopped the vehicle on the side of the highway at 6am when the passenger got out and starting walking east, the release said.

A prosecutor has launched a process to formally identify the victim, believed to be a resident of the Geneva area.

Elsewhere in the canton, a security guard working at a McDonald’s restaurant in Yverdon-les-Bains lodged a criminal complaint over the weekend after being savagely beaten by a gang of youths on Friday night.

The employee of the Transesco security firm had asked the group of young men to move away from the area outside the restaurant where they were allegedly smoking marijuana, 20Minutes reported online.

The men, aged between 15 and 20, responded by attacking the agent, hitting him repeatedly in the face, the newspaper said, citing a witness.

“Even when he fell, he received kicks to the head,” the witness is quoted as saying.

The security guard was unconscious when he was taken by ambulance to a hospital where he spent the night in a hospital.

He received numerous cuts to the face, swollen tissue and a broken tooth, 20Minutes said.

The incident took place in the Place Bel-Air, a central square in Yverdon known as a place for drug dealing, where Transesco has been hired by the municipality to provide security, the online news site added.