Marseille lived this Monday, April 3, a night of extreme violence, yet another bloody episode of a turf war between drug traffickers which, according to the police, looks more and more like a « vendetta ». Here is what we know, for the time being, of these three shootings.
- Three shootings in one night
The first exchanges of fire took place around midnight, near the city of Castellas, in the 15th arrondissement of Marseille. Others followed a few minutes later, avenue de la Padouane, on the other side of the A7 motorway, near Aygalades. Or less than 500 meters away.
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The third shooting broke out shortly before 1 a.m., near the city center, in the port district of La Joliette, in the 2nd arrondissement of Marseille.
These dramas have no “no link yet” between them, according to the Marseille prosecutor’s office.
- Three dead, eight injured
Two men aged 21 and 23 were killed in Castellas, where around fifty assault rifle casings were discovered, detailed Marseille prosecutor Dominique Laurens, specifying the age of the victims.
This is where the 16-year-old died and another was seriously injured, with a life-threatening condition, according to the prosecution. A third teenager, aged 14, was less seriously injured. A total of eight people were injured.
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The teenager who died on Monday morning would be a kid from Marseille and, at La Joliette, an 18-year-old who knew him told journalists:
“There, I want to go home and hide. I’m sad, I’m scared, I’m going to be killed too in town, it’s serious all the same. »
- Four people arrested
The investigations have been entrusted to the judicial police, who have already arrested four people concerning these latest shootings, according to a source close to the investigation.
According to the first elements of the investigation, the events in Joliette would have “links with drug trafficking at La Paternelle”, noted the police chief of Bouches-du-Rhône, questioned by AFP. Gold “this city is today at the origin of almost all the assassinations of recent months in Marseille, with two teams who are fighting over deal points and have undoubtedly entered into a sort of vendetta dynamic”said Frédérique Camilleri.
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“We will try to hurt the opponent by killing people around him, from his network”she explained. “And that probably explains the chain of shootings, (which target) most often people extremely low in the network. »
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- 13 gunshot deaths since January
A 17-year-old boy, known for « dealer », was lynched to death in mid-February at La Paternelle. At the end of March, the body of a 20-year-old man riddled with bullets was found on a vacant lot. Located in the 14th arrondissement, this city is a succession of small colorful and degraded buildings. On the walls, the extremely lucrative drug sales points are indicated by arrowed routes, and the menus « shit, shit, coke » displayed for all to see.
There are now 13 people, according to an AFP count, who have been shot dead since the beginning of the year in the second city of France, and in particular in its cities in the working-class neighborhoods of the north plagued by traffic, with approximately 130 identified deal points.
The year 2022 had already been very dark, with 32 victims of homicides in an organized gang in the area of jurisdiction of the Marseille judicial court, according to the prosecution. The city had not seen such a record since 2016.
