At the end of the day on Wednesday, according to statements by the public prosecutor of Marseille Dominique Laurens during a press briefing held this Friday, a 26-year-old man was arrested at his home in Marseille and placed in police custody. . He is suspected of having stabbed another 25-year-old man to death in the Notre-Dame-du-Mont metro station on January 7.
That day, shortly before 8 p.m., a young Georgian asylum seeker was in the Cours Julien metro station, a festive district of Marseille, when she crossed paths with two individuals who were trying to to steal his cell phone. The young woman realizes this, manages to keep her phone and joins her companion, also a Georgian asylum seeker, outside the station. Around 8:45 p.m., the couple took the metro back home when they met the two individuals who had tried to steal the young woman’s phone. The latter recognizes them, and indicates it to her companion.
A knife hidden in the sock
“There is an altercation between them, reports Dominique Laurens. Obviously, there are comments that are exchanged. The respondent indicates that he reacts badly to the comments that are made, which he takes as comments against his deceased mother. In response, the latter takes out the knife he is hiding in his sock and strikes the young Georgian twice, one on the victim’s left elbow, the other, deadly, directly in the left ventricle. The young woman is also the subject of violence. The two defendants then flee on a scooter whose license plate is raised thanks to passers-by, alerted by the young woman who was trying to pursue them.
Thanks to the testimony of the young Georgian, but also the video surveillance cameras of the RTM, the city of Marseille and several private establishments, the police manage to identify the perpetrators and retrace their routes and activities. “The police will realize that what happened with this young woman corresponds to a fact which was repeated several times this afternoon”, specifies Dominique Laurens. In this metro station where they stayed at least all afternoon, the two accomplices had already stolen a credit card from another victim, and bought cigarettes with this credit card in a bar-tabac in La Canebière, immediately after the mischief.
The second wanted person
The police first manage to identify a first individual, who is not the author of the stab wounds. “By looking at the criminal record, the police will discover that this man is acting with an individual who corresponds to the description, because he is very tall. “The main suspect is indeed 1.95 meters tall, while the second would be “extremely small”, in the words of the public prosecutor of Marseille. Both have had dealings with authorities in a previous theft case.
During his arrest at his home on Wednesday evening, the main suspect admitted the facts, and designated the weapon with which he acted, kept at his home. He had already had to respond to justice in 2020 for concealment of theft, without being convicted. On the day of the murder in the metro station, this man had not presented himself for a second trial concerning him, this time for theft in a meeting, use of narcotics and lack of insurance.
“This man will be referred in the course of the afternoon”, specifies the prosecutor of the Republic of Marseilles. He will have to answer for attempted theft, murder, concealment of the scooter theft and violence against the young woman. As for the second person with him, who it seems would have intervened to stop him at the time of the murder, although identified, he remains wanted by the investigators who wish to hear him.