The longer the list of victims grows, the deeper the mystery becomes. In recent weeks, syringe injections have multiplied in France. According to a latest report brought to the attention of 20 minutes, the police identified 461 victims and registered 381 complaints. In Paris, fifteen investigations were opened by the head of the administration of harmful substances after complaints were filed, the prosecution tells us. Facts that take place mainly during concerts or evenings in nightclubs or bars, and whose investigators are still struggling to understand the reason.
This unexplained wave of bites does not spare any region of France. In Strasbourg, eight people reported being stung at the end of May during rapper PLK’s concert at the Zénith. In Belfort, two young men and four young girls, aged 17 to 18, also claim to have found traces of bites on their bodies while they were at the International University Music Festival.
In Nîmes, 51 people claim to have been victims of savage bites during the feria. In Marseille, a 15-year-old boy was admitted to the emergency room of Saint-Joseph hospital after falling ill during Jul’s concert at the Vélodrome stadium. “Loss of consciousness, malaise, vomiting”… On Facebook, his father says that the young man also felt bad after being bitten.
No substance detected
But it is in Brittany and Loire-Atlantique that the number of cases seems the most important: at the beginning of May, 69 bites had already been identified in nightclubs and establishments of the same type, without any chemical substance being discovered. “The reason for these acts, without associated compensation, theft or corollary violence, is not identified”, recognized in a press release the general prosecutor’s office of the Rennes Court of Appeal. The results of the analyzes which had been carried out, he added, “are all negative, both for GHB and for other toxic substances”.
“Out of more than a hundred samples taken, no substance was found, in particular this famous GHB which we hear a lot about, but also other substances which have been searched for exhaustively”, confirmed to France 3 the Professor Joëlle Micallef, Director of the Center for Assessment and Information on Drug Dependence – Addictovigilance (CEIP-Addictovigilance) PACA Corse.
In almost all of the cases recorded, no toxic substance was identified, except in two cases, in Roanne and in the eastern Pyrenees. “GHB administered in this way would not have the same effects as when it is ingested anyway”, confides to 20 minutes a police source. Is this a way for perpetrators to distract victims? In order to steal them? To create a psychosis? Investigators are still struggling to understand. Especially since few suspects have been identified and arrested.
The festivals are getting ready
But on June 5, a 20-year-old from Toulon was indicted as part of an open judicial investigation, in particular for “aggravated violence by weapon and premeditation”. He is suspected of having stung about twenty people who attended two days earlier the recording of the TF1 program “The song of the year” on the beaches of Mourillon, in Toulon.
One of the victims, a security officer who worked on the site, was hospitalized after feeling unwell. The suspect was spotted by two young women who told investigators they saw him with a syringe and managed to stop him from sticking them. Facts that the young man “fully disputes”, had informed the Toulon prosecutor, Samuel Finielz.
Festival organizers want to be reassuring and are thinking for this summer about measures they could take to ensure the safety of the thousands of participants. “We asked ourselves the question when we heard about the phenomenon in the media”, explains to 20 minutes a communication officer for the Hop Hop Hop festival.
To prevent GHB from being administered in the glass of festival-goers, the organizers will distribute “protections for the cups”. And concerning the famous bites, a reflection is underway concerning the establishment of a “code that victims or witnesses can use in the various bars or information points of the festival”. Controls will also be “intensified”. But how to detect the presence of an often very small syringe? “It’s super complicated”, recognizes the festival’s communication officer.