One of the three men seriously injured in the five shootings that hit Marseille overnight from Wednesday to Thursday, in working-class neighborhoods, finally died of his injuries, we learned Thursday evening from a source close to the investigation. This man is 26 years old, said this source, confirming the initial information of the daily Provence.
This death brings to 15 the number of victims killed since the beginning of the year in the second city of France in violence generally linked to drug trafficking, according to an AFP count.
This young man had been injured in the last shooting of the night, around 12:30 a.m., towards the Belle de Mai district in the 3rd arrondissement. Two other men, aged 21 and 30, were also seriously injured. It was not specified Thursday evening if the vital prognosis of these two victims were still engaged.
Previously, no less than four shootings had been recorded across the city in just an hour.
A 15-year-old injured
A first shooting had thus taken place shortly before midnight Wednesday evening, cited Félix-Pyat (3rd arrondissement), injuring one, had explained the police headquarters. The person affected is a 15-year-old teenager, the Marseille prosecutor’s office told AFP.
According to the prosecution, confirming the information of Provence, three sequences of shots were then heard across the city, a priori without causing any injuries. Around 11:30 p.m., shots were first fired in the 4th arrondissement. A 51-year-old man, injured, had been taken care of by the emergency services, after having “received blows”.
Then “two shootings” had broken out, still “without causing any known injuries”, around midnight then around 12:30 a.m., “near the city of Busserine then near the city Consolat”, known to house drug sales outlets .
Five separate investigations have been opened into these facts, the prosecution said.
“A logic of vendetta”
No indication had yet been given Thursday evening on the reasons for these shootings and no direct link had yet been established with the drug trafficking which plagues the neighborhoods targeted by these shootings. Thus, the three people affected at the Belle de Mai are not known for drug trafficking, the prosecution had insisted.
These shots came less than two weeks after three shootings that left three dead in Marseille, including a 16-year-old boy, and eight injured. For these shootings on the night of April 2 to 3, the prosecution had evoked “a logic of territorial control, in particular that of the city of La Paternelle, and a logic of vendetta” between rival gangs reigning over drug trafficking.
It was in La Paternelle, a housing estate in the northern districts of the city, that a 17-year-old teenager, known as a “dealer”, was lynched to death in mid-February. There also that, at the end of March, the body of a 20-year-old man, riddled with bullets, had been found, abandoned on a vacant lot, a priori several days after being fatally shot.
Since the beginning of the year, fifteen people have now lost their lives in Marseille, most of the time against the backdrop of drug trafficking, fourteen shot dead and this teenager beaten to death.