The city of Saint-Denis extended this Monday for forty-eight hours the ban on gatherings in public spaces, taken Thursday after the death of two teenagers aged 14 and 18, following two separate attacks, in a context of inter-district tensions. “It is a measure which has so far proven itself,” declared Mathieu Hanotin, PS mayor of the popular town of 113,000 inhabitants, in Seine-Saint-Denis. Since Thursday, the police have carried out “around twenty arrests of people who were clearly ill-intentioned since they were in possession of various blunt objects”, reported the councilor.
“All groupings and gatherings of people leading to abusive, prolonged occupations of the public domain, undermining order and security, are prohibited” throughout the municipality, according to a municipal decree. If minors are not specifically mentioned in the decree, the objective is to avoid a “return match”, in the event that the hypothesis of inter-district brawls is confirmed.
An explosion of “gang facts”
Around 7:45 p.m. on Wednesday, Sedan, a 14-year-old school student in Saint-Denis, was stabbed to death on the metro platform (line 13) in the heart of the city. As of Sunday evening, a 19-year-old young man who had gone to the Seine-Saint-Denis judicial police, responsible for the investigation, was indicted for intentional homicide of a 15-year-old minor and placed in pre-trial detention. . A few hours before the murder of Sedan, an 18-year-old high school student, Farid A., had been violently attacked with baseball bats, according to a police source, in front of his school. He died of these injuries on Saturday.
The “attack was fleeting, cold, indiscriminate and extremely violent with the use of blunt objects. The attackers left their victim on the ground,” described the municipality in a press release. Particular attention was paid to securing educational establishments within the framework of the municipal decree prohibiting gatherings. “We are doing our utmost so that there is no doubt about the fact that we can send our child safely to middle and high school,” Mathieu Hanotin insisted this Monday morning, after visiting at the Bartholdi high school, where Farid attended school.
At the end of the day, Laurent Nuñez, Paris police prefect, responsible for the Seine-Saint-Denis department, briefly spoke with the board of directors of the professional establishment. In the commune of Saint-Denis, “since the beginning of January, we have recorded ten gang incidents whereas in 2023, we had 12 over the entire year,” the prefect reported in front of the high school. In this context, “five times more police personnel are mobilized to bring back some calm and serenity,” he added, a device which will “stay as long as necessary” on the commune, according to Laurent Nuñez.