A 28-year-old man was killed and several were seriously injured by gunfire during the night from Friday to Saturday in Sevran, a poor town in Seine-Saint-Denis. The shooting is attributed to violent turf wars between drug traffickers.
The events occurred on Friday around 11:45 p.m., in the Beaudottes district of the town of 52,000 inhabitants, located 25 km northeast of Paris.
When the police arrived, five injured people were on the ground, according to a police Source.
Despite the intervention of emergency services, a 28-year-old man, hit in the throat and head, died on the spot.
The other four, men aged 22 to 29, were evacuated to different hospitals.
According to this same Source, one of them was in serious danger: aged 24, the young man was hit by two bullets in the chest, a third in the knee and a fourth in the buttocks.
During the night, three other gunshot wounds were admitted to the Aulnay-sous-Bois hospital center, one of which left immediately.
The shooting occurred when two people arrived in a parking lot in a Peugeot 5008. The passenger got out of the vehicle then fired several times before fleeing, a police Source said.
From the same Source, 25 7.62 cartridge cases, a caliber used in particular for Kalashnikov-type weapons, were found on the ground.
No trace of the shooting was visible Saturday morning in the parking lot of the Micro-Folie cultural center where the events occurred, noted an AFP journalist.
A resident of the city of Beaudottes told AFP that he ‘heard shots a little before midnight’. ‘I understood that it came from here,’ added the man in his forties, pointing to the parking lot, ‘but I didn’t come down from my house,’ he said. , preferring not to give his name.
On site, an employee of the town hall’s technical service, also wishing to remain anonymous, advised the journalists present not to linger on the scene because ‘the young people will soon come down’. ‘It’s hot,’ he added simply.
Several units of mobile forces were sent to the area on Saturday to reinforce a security system already comprising local police officers and anti-crime brigades (BAC), the police headquarters told AFP.
At least five gendarmerie vans were visible at the end of the afternoon, according to an AFP journalist. Mobile gendarmes patrolled the city on foot and checked the identity of young people in the neighborhood. National police officers were also present.
CRS 8, a unit specializing in the fight against urban violence, was to be deployed in Sevran in the evening, a police Source told AFP.
Point of deal ‘eradicated’
An investigation has been opened for intentional homicide by an organized gang and attempted intentional homicide by an organized gang, the Bobigny public prosecutor’s office told AFP. She was entrusted to the criminal brigade of the Paris judicial police. No person had been arrested as of late Saturday afternoon.
“We are not going to hide our faces: it is necessarily a settling of scores linked to drug trafficking,” reacted to AFP Stéphane Blanchet, DVG mayor of the city since 2018.
‘There is a need to bring order and intervene deeply to eradicate trafficking,’ he added.
In a press release published on Saturday, the councilor denounces an ‘unbelievable outburst’ of violence which he attributes to ‘dirty money from the drug economy’, an ‘economy of death which is rotting our cities’.
‘In previous weeks, other shootings had taken place, probably linked to trafficking, in a neighborhood close to a neighboring town,’ he said, stressing that ‘these phenomena unfortunately go beyond the borders of our towns.’
After Marseille, Sevran was the subject of an anti-drug operation ‘square net XXL’ on March 25 with the aim of stopping trafficking. In this city, the Rougemont city deal point had been ‘eradicated’, the police headquarters said on Saturday.
According to this Source, ‘it is obvious that these operations destabilize traffic and give rise to turf wars to re-appropriate the dismantled points’.
A total of 315 homicides or attempted homicides linked to drug trafficking were recorded in France between January and November 2023 in police zones, an increase of 57% over one year, according to the national police.
/ATS
