The police intervened around 10:45 p.m. after gunfire in a neighborhood of the city, finding the first person injured on the ground, shot in the head. Aged 15, he was hospitalized in a state of absolute emergency, his life prognosis being in jeopardy. According to the same source, two other teenagers were shot, one in a shoulder, the other in an ankle, and were treated by emergency services. Around ten 22 caliber shell casings were found on the ground by investigators.
The events took place in the Couronneries district, where reinforcements will be deployed during the day, said the prefect of Vienne in a message posted on the social network by firearm also but more lightly, presented themselves directly to the hospital – and “tensions between groups”.
A shootout
“It started with a shooting at a restaurant and ended with a brawl between rival gangs which involved several hundred people. I am told of 4 to 600 people, according to the prefect's report,” declared the Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, Friday morning on BFMTV/RMC, linking the shooting to drug trafficking.
According to the police source, 50 to 60 people engaged in scuffles were present on the scene when the police arrived. “During the intervention of the emergency services, several hundred people were in the vicinity and a brawl began, with some young people pointing out others as potentially close to the alleged perpetrator,” the prefect of the police subsequently clarified on BFMTV. Vienna Jean-Marie Girier.
The police then used three tear gas grenades to disperse them. Reinforcements from the gendarmerie intervened and calm was restored around 11:30 p.m.
The environmentalist mayor of Poitiers, Léonore Moncond'huy, spoke of “an unprecedented episode” in the history of this city of around 90,000 inhabitants, which “testifies to a fairly serious evolution of society”.
Another incident
During the night, the police intervened in a place close to the first events, where an individual seemed to be held by around ten others; taken from the crowd, the latter was heard by the investigators.
The Minister of the Interior estimated that we were “at a tipping point” in terms of drug trafficking, while he must go to Rennes on Friday where a five-year-old child is between life and death after having received shot in the head last Saturday as part of a settling of scores linked to drug trafficking. “The 'narcoracailles' no longer have limits (…) These shootings don't happen in South America, they happen in Rennes, in Poitiers (…). We are at a tipping point,” he said. He argued that we now had “the choice between general mobilization or the 'Mexicanization' of the country.”
