The city center of the city of Loiret was ransacked by several hundred young people on the night of Thursday 29 to Friday 30 June. To the amazement of a population torn between understanding anger and condemning looting.
Three buildings set on fire, 50 stores ransacked and looted, dozens of cars burned. In Montargis, this Friday, June 30, there is consternation. The night before, “300 rioters”, according to the mayor, have swept over the city center, which is usually very quiet. “I had stopped watching TV and listening to the radio because of the war in Ukraine and now it’s happening here, in Montargis, what! We’ve never seen that.” comments Sylvie, retired from the pharmaceutical industry, in front of the smoldering ruins of a shop selling household items. Among the passers-by, Livie, mother of the district and auxiliary of life, had ordered sheets the day before in the store. “Last night, I heard screams, I understood that something was happening but I was afraid to go and see. They burned down the pharmacy, the clothing store too… It all makes me sad,” does it slip–her lips quivering.
At the corner of the street, Thomas Ménagé, deputy elected by more than 63% in the 4th constituency of Loiret and spokesperson for the RN group in the National Assembly, shakes hands with a sorry and circumspect air. Like almost all of the mayors of the agglomeration, that of Montargis, LR Benoît Digeon, declared him persona non grata in his stronghold, where he only narrowly won. “Except the amazement, what to say today? We see the tears of the traders, we have the balls. We pay thirty to forty years of judicial laxity, that’s why we offer short sentences from the first misdeeds, so that fear changes sides, ” places Lieutenant Marine Le Pen, too happy to tackle the RN program on this situation.
“It’s my life that is gone, there!”
Elsewhere in town, on the edge of one of the canals which have earned Montargis the hyperbolic nickname of “Venice of the Gâtinais”, Michel, 45, joined at the beak, cap turned upside down, track leg raised and bull terrier on a leash, disapproves of the overflows. “It’s profiteering: the shops, they have nothing to do with it, the little one died by the police, not by the shops”, he complains. He adds: “Sure, you don’t kill a kid for a hit and run, I also did hit and run, I stopped after a while, don’t be crazy either.”
Further in the Montargoise conurbation, in Châlette-sur-Loing, a working-class and communist town proud of its ethnic mosaic, where the municipal police station was set on fire and several vehicles burned, Mamadou, 15, weighs the pros and cons “If we kill a young person, it’s normal that they are angry in the neighborhoods. But it also hurts people who work and lose everything.” Behind him, the owner of the bar-tabac in the Pontonnerie district, looted in the night, awaits the police for the findings. “It’s my life that is gone, there!” she says on the verge of tears, without wanting to say more about the events of the night, out of fear for her family. The bakery next door escaped the ransacking. “There are only cakes here, they are not interested”, notes the baker, certain that “It will start again next night”.
Get out as fast as possible
“The day is breaking, we have two buildings that are still burning and very big damage in the city. I invited the prefect to come see us today and I also asked for contact with the Ministry of the Interior. There were 30 police officers missing last night at the police station, there were 20! what are you doing with 20 people in a situation like this ?” was indignant in the morning, hot, Benoît Digeon, on the waves of the local radio C2L. Since then, communication has been locked in all the communities of the Montargoise conurbation as well as on the side of the prefecture. But the street and social networks are talkative. Rumor has it that there were two dead in the night fires. “It seems that they are going to come down en masse to loot, it’s on Facebook”, assures by lowering her iron curtain the manager of a hairdressing salon, saying to herself “at the end of his life” and claiming without complex not to have any “nothing to wax about the kid who died”. Throughout the agglomeration, the signs closed one after the other at midday, including the hypermarkets in the Antibes area, in Amilly, the largest commercial area in the sector. Usually overcrowded on weekend eves, the place was deserted this Friday. In the streets, to get out of them, huge lines of cars stretched out in the sun. Objective: get out as quickly as possible.