Gérald Darmanin is in Nîmes on Friday August 25 after the death of two people in shootings linked to drug trafficking. On-site reinforcements are expected with the RAID and CRS.
[Mis à jour le 25 août 2023 à 12h01] Gérald Darmanin is in Nîmes (Gard), Friday August 25, after the death of two people in shootings in the Pissevin district. Monday evening, a 10-year-old boy was killed while he was in his uncle’s car and an 18-year-old man was the victim of a settling of scores in the context of drug trafficking, on the night of Wednesday August 23 to Thursday August 24. In response, the Minister of the Interior announced the deployment of RAID, another CRS company and 15 judicial police officers. These reinforcements should remain in place for several weeks.
A first arrest in connection with the murder of the 18-year-old man took place on Thursday August 24, reports BFM-TV. He was taken into custody for “murder in an organized gang” and for “other offenses related to organized crime”. The detainee is well known to the police, but only “for a traffic offense” added the public prosecutor Cécile Gensac. This announcement was made just hours before Gérald Darmanin’s arrival in Nîmes. guest of RTL, Friday August 25, the Minister of the Interior said he wanted to dismantle the drug trade which he described as “an ecosystem of all delinquency”. He also pointed to consumer responsibility. According to him, “the 10-year-old kid who dies is a collateral victim of drug use”.
Abdallah Zekri, rector of the Peace Mosque in this Nîmes district, told Free lunch not understanding the minister’s arrival: “The inhabitants feel less and less safe, I don’t know if Darmanin’s arrival can change much. What’s the point of him coming? We need solutions concrete.” Many residents were surprised to see the arrival of a backhoe and collection trucks to clean the streets. While municipal employees have not been to Pissevin for a year, everything was cleaned the day before Gérald Darmanin’s trip. A scene reminiscent of Emmanuel Macron’s visit last June to Marseille where several neighborhoods had been stripped before the arrival of the President of the Republic.
A district of Nîmes in shock after the murder of a 10-year-old child
A second person therefore died in this district of Pissevin. He is an 18-year-old man, who was found dead, killed on the night of Wednesday August 23 to Thursday August 24, around 4:00 a.m., while the CRS8 “had stopped its session at 3:00 a.m.”, indicated The Minister. According to the prosecutor, the victim was known to the police and justice services” and that she had been killed “on a deal point”. The judicial police were seized.
During a press briefing, the Minister of the Interior said that arrests “of drug traffickers or people suspected of being linked to assassinations” had taken place in the afternoon. To deal with the violence caused by drug trafficking, Gérald Darmanin announced the dispatch of the Raid in support of the CRS8 so that the police are “present night and day on the three places which would be places of deal”. It was in this district of Pissevin that the young Fayed, aged 10, was injured, then died, on the night of Monday August 21 to Tuesday August 22, after a shooting.
“There are neighborhoods where security is no longer guaranteed” according to Elisabeth Borne
guest of France Blue on August 23, Elisabeth Borne reacted to the death of the 10-year-old child in Nîmes. A tragedy that occurred in the district of Pissevin, negatively known for its frequent settling of accounts against a background of drug trafficking. The Prime Minister saw it as “a terrible tragedy” and expressed her hope that the perpetrators of this murder would be “punished commensurate with the tragedy”. An investigation was opened and entrusted to the judicial police of Nîmes for murder in an organized gang after the death of the child. However, the shooters are still at large.
Elisabeth Borne acknowledged that “there are neighborhoods where security is no longer guaranteed”. An observation shared by residents of this Nîmes district at the microphone of France 2 : “They let the drug traffickers do it, we’re like in a ghetto”. These deaths arouse the anger of the inhabitants of the Nîmes district plagued by traffic. The public prosecutor of Nîmes, Cécile Gensac, assured that his shootings broke out in a “context of turf wars between traffickers after recent dismantling of deal points”.
How did the 10-year-old child die in Nîmes?
It was between 11 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. when a shooting rang out in the south-west of Nîmes on Monday August 21. At least one man armed with a rifle, described as a Kalashnikov type weapon, opened fire several times near the Avenue des Arts, according to information fromNews17. The shooter allegedly fired at a vehicle which housed a 27-year-old man living in the Nîmes district and two of his nephews, reports France Bleu Station Lozere. The local radio antenna indicates that four suspects are involved in the shooting according to several witnesses. They say they saw the shooter flee in a vehicle driven by an accomplice. Amateur videos of the scene posted on social networks and shared by Linda Kebbab, the national delegate of the police union Unit SGP FO, seem to correspond to the testimonies. The sequence of events has yet to be confirmed by investigators. At the scene of the shooting, around fifty casings of different calibers were found, confirming the trail of the shooting.
Horror. For several days in Nîmes, Kalashnikov-style settling of scores. That night, a family referred to in his car. The adult is injured. THE 10-year-old DEAD in the hospital. He had a bullet wound in his back. A child ! an assault rifle cartridge! pic.twitter.com/NmKGKfHCIc
—Linda Kebbab (@LindaKebbab) August 22, 2023
According to the Minister of the Interior, Monday’s shooting would respond to “what appears to be a settling of accounts between traffickers”. And the politician adds that the “police have already arrested many traffickers in recent weeks and will intensify their presence with firmness.” The Nîmes prosecutor’s office, like the investigators, seems to be of the same opinion.
Who are the victims of the shootings in Nîmes?
According to the first elements of the investigation into the August 21 shooting, the deceased child and his seriously injured uncle were not specifically targeted and the shots hit them in the vehicle by mistake, according to information from BFM TV. “The victim family is not associated in any way, neither before nor currently, in facts of a criminal nature”, confirmed the public prosecutor of Nîmes. The building near which the victims’ car was located, in the neighborhood in which the victims lived, was a known deal point for Pissevin according to the prosecution and it is this place that the shooters would have targeted without paying attention to the victims. . Investigators are considering the trail of reprisals between rival gangs, because a few hours earlier gunshots had injured a 15-year-old in the neighboring district of Valdegour, reports The Parisian.
The 27-year-old man driving the vehicle was seriously injured by at least three bullets in the back. He is a soldier returning from a mission and unknown to the police according to BFMTV. The two children, two brothers aged 10 and 7, are his nephews. The eldest, Fayed, was shot in the back and died shortly after arriving at hospital. “It is established that this minor received a projectile, probably a bullet, and this will be confirmed by scientific investigations, in a visibly lethal zone”, indicated the public prosecutor of Nîmes. As for the second child, aged 7, he is unharmed.
Fayed’s family, originally from Mayotte, have lived in the Nîmes district for a long time according to witnesses and neighbors. “It’s a very nice family. […] The mother is very discreet. [Fayed] was her eldest son of a sibling of three children.” Devastated by grief, she “cries, she does not know what to do anymore,” said her cousin at the microphone of RMC. On RTLthe father of the child recounted the discovery of his deceased son in the hospital, the man says he has no anger and relies “on justice, on God. The person who will pay, the suffering of his mother, my suffering and the suffering of all the people who saw this”.
Regarding the shooting on the night of Wednesday to Thursday, the victim is an 18-year-old young man. He was known to the police because of his involvement in drug trafficking. He was discovered around 4 a.m. by emergency services just a few blocks from the place where the 10-year-old child was killed. His body was shot in the abdomen and he was declared dead an hour later.
Previous settling of accounts in Nîmes
Several shootings causing injuries and sometimes deaths have occurred in recent weeks in the city of Nîmes. Violence which is mostly linked to drug trafficking which has taken root in certain neighborhoods, such as Pissevin, Chemin Bas and Mas de Mingue. The day before Fayed died, a 15-year-old boy was shot dead in the Valdegour neighborhood. The Parisian also recalls that the previous Saturday several shots had been fired by at least four men on scooters and aboard a sedan. Two men aged 18 and 20 and known to the courts were then arrested. “These assassinations are directly linked to narcobanditry and are settling of accounts in the context of either turf wars or commercial conflicts,” assured Eric Maurel, the former prosecutor of Nîmes with the Ile-de-France newspaper.
On June 6, Jean-Paul Fournier, mayor of Nîmes, decided to close the municipal library in the Pissevin district in the face of a “risk of serious attack on the safety of the agents”. According to the town hall, the dealers have installed checkpoints to better defend their deal points. Francebleu indicated that the 18 agents of the cultural center were victims of threats and verbal attacks. They even had to undergo checks and pat-downs in the middle of the street before entering the library. The roof of the building had been requisitioned to “monitor the surroundings and warn of the arrival of the police forces”.