a 15-year-old victim on Wednesday, a 14-year-old alleged killer on Friday… the prosecutor evokes an “ultra-rejuvenation” in the violence linked to drug trafficking

“Unprecedented savagery” et “ultrarejuvenation”. Nicolas Bessone, public prosecutor of Marseille, specified, Sunday October 6, that the victim of Wednesday’s narchomicide, “stabbed with fifty stab wounds and burned alive”was a 15-year-old teenager, and that the alleged killer of Friday’s is 14 years old.

These two cases are linked, he added, during a press conference on Sunday morning, stressing that the victim of the second homicide, a 36-year-old father, VTC driver and amateur footballer known in the region , was “totally external to drug trafficking” which are plaguing the second largest city in France.

“We have ultra-rejuvenation” perpetrators and an external victim on Friday, not hit by a stray bullet, but “coldly slaughtered”insisted the prosecutor, emphasizing “one more degree” crossed and “a total loss of bearings”.

Friday’s narchomicide, which therefore did not hit the intended target, was the planned revenge of that of Wednesday, also underlined the magistrate, evoking “the context of the opposing conflict in the 3^e district of Marseille [le clan de] the DZ Mafia and the so-called “Blacks” clan of the Félix-Pyat city for the takeover of the sales point in the Moulin-de-Mai city »at Belle de Mai.

Seventeen narchomicides in Marseille in 2024

The teenager was killed on Wednesday as part of the execution of a contract for which he had been recruited for 2,000 euros, through social networks, by a 23-year-old man detained at the Luynes penitentiary center, near from Aix-en-Provence, and presenting himself as belonging to the DZ Mafia. The young man knew the teenager, because the latter was a “jobber”, that is to say a small hand in drug trafficking, according to the prosecutor.

Supposed to go to intimidate a competitor, the teenager, accompanied by another 15-year-old teenager, had been spotted by a gang present at the foot of the building, and it was afterward that they noticed that he was wearing a handgun he goes “to be stabbed with fifty stab wounds and taken to the Fonscolombes city where, according to the results of the autopsy, he will be burned alive in a scene of savagery, if not unprecedented, rare”. The judicial police arrested the second 15-year-old minor, who had managed to escape. He was brought before an investigating judge to be indicted.

Following this death, the same inmate from Luynes sponsored a second ” CONTRACT “ to take revenge and kill a member of the “Blacks” gang, for 50,000 euros this time. “He recruited a 14-year-old minor from Vaucluse in exactly the same way and organized all the logistics to pick him up by car and take him to a hotel room in Marseille. The young man was himself carrying a 357 Magnum revolver”said the public prosecutor of Marseille

Having left to carry out his mission aboard a VTC, the teenager, accompanied by another individual, allegedly asked the driver to wait for him. But he refused, provoking the anger of the minor, who fired “a fatal bullet to the back of the head” with the 357 Magnum pistol with which he was armed. He flees, hides nearby and asks the sponsor for an exfiltration. But, “for an unknown reason”the latter calls the police and denounces him, then the 14-year-old teenager is arrested. The sponsor, who was identified, was taken from the remand center before being released on Sunday.

With these last two cases, the number of “narchomicides”, a term coined by Marseille justice to describe the settling of scores against a backdrop of drug trafficking, has now increased to seventeen since the start of the year. According to figures from Agence France-Presse and the public prosecutor’s office, this phenomenon is however down significantly in 2024 compared to the record number of forty-nine deaths in 2023.