“My son was stabbed for nothing, like other young people before”: the cry of alarm from a mother after the attack on her son in Castres

Karène is an angry mother. Against his son's attackers and the worrying rise in daily violence. Friday morning, at dawn, she learned that her 21-year-old son, Léo, had received a stab wound to the ribs while leaving a nightclub. Returning to his car parked near the Mail garden, he was allegedly attacked by around twenty individuals and severely beaten.

“He ran away and they took him to an alley. That’s where they beat him,” says the mother, still in shock from the story told by her son. Taken care of by the firefighters, hospitalized for a short stay, the young Castrese has since been released and joined his family at home, located at the gates of Sidobre. A complaint has been filed. “He received a lot of blows to the head and torso. We were afraid that the stab wound had hit his lung. Today he is better, even if he hurts everywhere. Léo is disturbed, shocked.”

“We're talking about gratuitous violence, there's a real problem there. It happens too often, I didn't think it was possible in Castres. I won't let go of the matter, my son was stabbed for nothing, like other young people before”

A pain that the mother exposed on social networks, in a widely reported post, where there was mention of a possible racist attack (since deleted, Editor’s note). “I'm not used to doing this and I was surprised by the number of people who commented and the number of kids who were attacked. I received a significant number of messages from parents who told me told about the experience of their children. We are talking about gratuitous violence, there is a real problem there. It happens too often, I didn't think it was possible in Castres. my son was stabbed nothing, like other young people before,” thunders the mother, worried about her 18-year-old daughter, who is also starting to go out.

A person taken into custody at the police station

Contacted on Saturday evening, and based on the first elements in its possession, the prosecution rejects the scenario of a beating 20 to one. Several fights were reported in the mall garden, and a young man was indeed injured by a stab, in this case Léo. The investigation continues at the Castres police station, where according to our information, a person was in police custody yesterday evening. An investigation made complex by the absence of video protection cameras at the locations of the blows exchanged.

In terms of conflict resolution, Karène's concern is shared by a number of judicial sources. “The stabbings are a disaster,” one of them even told us. The first hours of the day on Friday were lively for the police: during Léo's attack, a man jumped into the Agout, from the Villegoudou bridge, in the city center. Firefighters quickly intervened and were able to pull the body out of the water. Despite the cardiac massage performed, the victim could not be resuscitated. The man was around thirty years old. It would be suicide.