A suspect actively sought. After the shooting linked to drug trafficking which engulfed Poitiers on Thursday evening, investigators are tracking down the alleged shooter, who shot and injured five teenagers aged 15 and 16, one of whom is between life and death.
The prosecution opened an investigation into attempted homicide, specifying that the main suspect, according to the first elements of the investigation, “would have engaged in the sale of narcotics”, in the area where the facts occurred, ” during the previous days. According to the public prosecutor in Poitiers, Cyril Lacombe, a suspect whose identity is being verified, “present for several weeks in the city”, is wanted.
According to our information, the individual suspected of being the shooter is known to the judicial services for four cases. He was indicted in 2021 for possession and use of narcotics in Roissy-en-France (Val-d’Oise), then the following year in Marseille for criminal association, possession and transport of weapons of war. This year, in 2024, his legal troubles concern the use of narcotics at the Gare de Lyon in Paris, as well as a case of repeated violence and death threats in Aubagne (Bouches-du-Rhône).
The trail of the “jobber”
“This information should be taken with a pinch of salt because there is still no certainty about his identity,” warns a source close to the matter. “We are not yet sure if this is the shooter,” adds another. But if this idea were to be confirmed, it would illustrate the phenomenon of the uberization of narco-delinquency, with the employment of an exportable workforce at the whim of criminal organizations.
“Jobbers”, these young people intermittently involved in drug trafficking who can successively lie in wait, sell or sometimes kill. During a search Friday morning in a home he allegedly occupied, seven rounds of ammunition of the same caliber as the 11 found at the scene of the shooting, as well as “partial elements of a dismantled weapon”, were seized by the investigators.
Thursday evening, the police intervened around 10:45 p.m. after gunfire in front of a kebab restaurant in a working-class area 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. Two other teenagers were injured by gunfire, a 16-year-old in a shoulder, the other a 15-year-old in an ankle. They were taken care of by emergency services.
Two other victims aged 16, with more minor injuries to the scalp and one foot, presented themselves directly to the hospital. Eleven shell casings “which would have been fired from a type 22 long rifle semi-automatic weapon” were found near the restaurant, according to the prosecution. The events took place in the Couronneries district, classified as a priority for city policy (QPV), where reinforcements of mobile forces must be deployed on Friday evening.
Two witnesses present on site were attacked “as being likely to know the identity of the shooter”, a third person “being designated by the clamor as being able to know the latter”, added the prosecutor.
