“Being attacked because we grumbled at people who were urinating at home is barbaric”. Friday evening, on the town hall square in Bayonne, several hundred people gathered to protest “against all violence” after the death on Thursday of a man following an attack at the end of July during the ferias.
On this esplanade, a minute of silence was observed in tribute to Patrice, a 46-year-old Bayonnais. The investigation, opened for attempted murder, has been reclassified as murder, the prosecution said on Friday, confirming information from France Bleu Pays basque.
The three suspects of the fatal assault, still at large and wanted, are described as being between 20 and 25 years old, “athletically built” and having a bare chest at the time of the events. The call for witnesses launched the day after the attack was supplemented by a composite portrait of one of them, broadcast since Thursday.
The victim was badly beaten as she returned home and made a remark to the three men, caught urinating outside her door. After a cerebral hemorrhage and nine days of artificial coma, the victim did not survive.
The mayor sends his condolences to the family of the victim
His death aroused great emotion among the inhabitants of Bayonne, where the annual festivals, which this year saw a record attendance of 1.3 million “festayres” (festival-goers), are an unmissable event.
Mayor Jean-René Etchegaray sent a “testimony of support and affection” to the family and loved ones of the victim “in this painful ordeal”, via a message published on the social network Twitter.
In the past, rare cases of fatal attacks have been recorded during summer festivals in the South-West: an 18-year-old youth was notably killed with a knife in Habas (Landes) in 2007 and a 19-year-old years had been fatally stabbed during a fight in Nay (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) two years later.
In Bayonne, the security system – reinforced since the attack of July 14, 2016 in Nice with more than 1,000 police, gendarmerie and private security agents – represents a third of the budget for the organization of the celebrations, which exceeds three million euros.
The mayor, many elected officials, but also members of associations or residents of the city and the surrounding area made the trip on Friday evening to show their solidarity with the relatives of the victim.
A “lamentable” aggression
For Jean-Pierre Delos, a 61-year-old Bayonnais, this deadly attack is “lamentable”. “How to understand? It’s impossible. I dare to hope that his attackers will be arrested very quickly,” he told AFP.
Others lamented that the convivial spirit of the holidays was lost with the crowds. “Before we came quietly to the Holidays and they change, we see it, there are too many people”, estimates Sylvie Etchegoyen, aged 61. “To be attacked because we grumbled against people who urinated at home, it’s barbaric”, she is indignant.
At the microphone, Michaëlla Clapisson, representative of the Bayonne “peñas” (local associations), denounced “parties sullied by acts of unbearable violence”, with also several cases of rape which would have occurred during the festivities.
While four investigations for rape “occurring on the public highway or in apartments” had already been opened, a fifth investigation for rape and sexual assault was entrusted to the PJ of Bayonne, concerning two minor victims, we learned at the prosecutor’s office. Investigations are also still ongoing to try to find the attackers.