They had come to party even though the gathering had been banned by the Ille-et-Vilaine prefecture. Without realizing that the party was going to turn into chaos. During the night from Saturday to Sunday, a rave party which brought together nearly 3,000 partygoers in an abandoned warehouse in Brie, southeast of Rennes, completely degenerated.
Exasperated by the noise, local residents living in a neighboring Traveler camp showed up armed in the middle of the night, violently attacking the revelers. Fifteen people were injured during the clashes and many vehicles damaged. 20 Minutes takes stock.
What happened this weekend?
It all started like every rave party with a game of cat and mouse between partygoers and the police. After a meeting set up in the parking lot of the Leclerc Cleunay center in Rennes on Friday evening, a convoy of several hundred vehicles formed on the dual carriageway between Rennes and Angers to head for Brie. It is in this small town located near Janzé, about twenty minutes from the Breton capital, that the partygoers set up their scene by breaking into an abandoned warehouse occupied until recently by a logistics company. After installing the equipment, the party started during the night from Friday to Saturday, bringing together nearly 3,000 people at its peak. Significant resources were then deployed to supervise the party which continued without major incident until Saturday evening.
Why did the rave party get out of hand?
Even if the organizers often choose remote locations, a rave party is not a classical music concert and very regularly causes nuisance to the neighborhood with techno music sometimes heard several kilometers away. The location of this weekend's party was located according to the authorities “in the immediate vicinity of a busy departmental road and a railway line”. But also next to a camp occupied by travelers who did not appreciate the disturbance at all.
“We found a syringe in our garden, it’s not just because of the music,” said one of the community members, speaking on condition of anonymity, explaining that they had intervened with “around ten” people. to protect our children. A little earlier in the afternoon, they had also warned the organizers and threatened to destroy everything if the party continued on Saturday evening.
Which unfortunately happened at the beginning of the evening when local residents arrived armed on the site to chase away the partygoers. A fire captain present on site spoke of “throws of projectiles and stones” and the use of baseball bats. “They stoned us to make us leave the hangar, there was a projectile, like a Molotov cocktail, which went over my head,” says a young man who took part in the party.
As evidenced by videos posted on social networks, several party vehicles and trucks were also vandalized with numerous broken windshields. Faced with such chaos, police and firefighters were called in to secure the scene and take care of the injured. Around 1 a.m., the organizers finally cut the sound and put an end to the party before the participants gradually left the site on Sunday.
What is the outcome of the clashes?
Despite the number of participants and the violence of the brawl, the toll was fortunately quite limited. There were still fifteen injured, eight of whom were taken to hospital. In a press release published late Sunday, the new prefect Amaury de Saint-Quentin strongly condemned this violence “which endangered the safety of everyone, including that of the police and the rescue teams mobilized for the securing this unauthorized gathering.” A little earlier in the day, the prefect had pointed out “the casualness and irresponsibility of the organizers” before putting everyone in the same basket a few hours later, insisting “on the necessity for all the protagonists of the clashes to fully assume their responsibility.
While the rave party was banned, 479 tickets were also issued to participants and 46 traffic offenses and 34 for possession of narcotics noted during the weekend. This led to two arrests followed by police custody measures. At the request of the Rennes public prosecutor's office, the sound equipment was finally seized.
