A man was shot and killed in a building lobby Thursday evening in Valence in a settling of scores against a backdrop of drug trafficking, AFP learned, confirming information from Dauphiné Libéré.
The victim, a man in his thirties, was in an elevator on the ground floor of a building when several shots rang out shortly before 9:30 p.m.
The man was known to the police, indicated the town hall of this town in Drôme, which evokes a probable “settling of scores between rival gangs against a backdrop of drug trafficking”.
Kalashnikov type weapons
“He was well known, we are dealing with local drug trafficking,” confirmed Denis Iglesias, head of the Alliance de la Drôme union. According to him, the weapons used are Kalashnikov-type war weapons.
The perpetrator or perpetrators of the shooting are on the run. A vehicle, which could have been used in their escape, was found burned in another district of the city. A man was also killed, shot in the head, Thursday evening in Vaulx-en-Velin, near Lyon, without the link being able to be established directly with drug trafficking.
Valencia, like many medium-sized cities, regularly experiences violence linked to drug trafficking. In May 2023, four men were shot and killed during score-settling between traffickers in this town of 65,000 inhabitants. In September, a man was beaten to death after a cocaine deal.
