A 17-year-old teenager died in Sarcelles Tuesday afternoon, after being stabbed in the street. The stabbing occurred shortly before 5 p.m., according to firefighters.
In the middle of the afternoon, a 17-year-old teenager died in Sarcelles (Val-d'Oise) “from a stab wound to the heart”, say his relatives, receiving condolences from the City on Wednesday, with the mayor calling the government not to forget “prevention” in the face of violence “which is becoming commonplace”.
“He died in the parking lot behind the bus stop, in broad daylight, in front of everyone. Do you see how crazy people have gone?” Without raising his voice, Sofiane, 30, who presents himself as a cousin of the victim, says he came from another department to support his family.
The stabbing occurred on Tuesday shortly before 5 p.m., in front of a large shopping center. Night had just fallen in the parking lot when the teenager was pronounced dead there.
“It is inconceivable and I condemn the death of my nephew”
According to the first elements of the investigation, he was attacked by a group of travelers getting off a bus, before being attacked by one of them who fatally stabbed him. The investigation notably follows the trail of a rivalry between young people from different neighborhoods.
The teenager lived 100 meters from the bus stop, in an HLM in the Chantepie city. Without speaking to the press, the parents received visits there all day long. And in front of the small gray building, an aunt of the victim suddenly let her excess of grief and anger overflow.
“My 17-year-old nephew was cowardly murdered with a stab to the heart,” Zakia, 45, told AFP, explaining that he comes from a French family of Algerian origin, the grandfather father having arrived at the end of the 1950s to work in construction.
“It happened to my nephew, it will happen to another. It will only be an Arab or a dead black person,” she says. “It would have been someone from another community, the ministers would be there, the president would be there, he would say it's inconceivable and I condemn. Well, I say: it's inconceivable and I condemn the death of my nephew.”
Networks “matrix” them
According to her family, the victim's mother absolutely wanted to leave the neighborhood “for a long time.” “His mother did everything for him, you know that,” says the aunt to the silent young people gathered in front of the building. “These young people are abandoned by the system. We put them in housing projects, they are all victims, but they are too young to understand it!”, she assures.
Sofiane, the cousin, sees in this crime a strong influence of social networks: “Young people are ready to do anything to be seen on social networks. It is the networks which mold them”.
“Before, the fights were with fists and sticks. Now it’s with knives,” he laments.
In the parking lot where the murder took place, a group of young people are gathered around a car. “It’s hard,” slips one of them, “he was a guy we hung out with every day, a good guy.” Another interrupts him: “A brother of ours is dead, we don’t even want to talk.”
The PS mayor of Sarcelles, Patrick Haddad, who came to talk with the parents, left without making a statement. Then he published a press release explaining that this homicide occurred after the injuries of three young people “last week in front of a school” and “the shooting of another a month and a half ago” at 22 years old.
This “escalation of murder” occurs “often against a backdrop of drug trafficking,” says the mayor, who promises to “strengthen the fight against this violence” locally. But faced with “a violence that is becoming commonplace,” he “deplores that the prevention is largely absent from the government's plan” Barnier to fight against drug trafficking, thought according to him “outside any City policy, whose credits are dramatically declining”.
