“It would be more reasonable for the perpetrators to come forward, because it won’t be long before we come looking for them,” warned Marie-Laure Pezant, the spokesperson for the national gendarmerie, on France Info this Tuesday morning. And it didn’t take long since seven people suspected of being involved in the attack that occurred on Saturday evening in Crépol in Drôme were arrested, announced Gérald Darmanin in the afternoon.
It was a “fight of quite unprecedented violence for a village of 500 inhabitants” estimated Marie-Laure Pezant, who however refused to use the term “brawl” used by the Valence prosecutor’s office to describe the facts. “A fight is two groups of young people who decided to make an appointment and confront each other, here, we are not in that configuration,” she justified.
“They came with the desire to kill”
“It was not a fight but an attack: they came with the desire to kill,” also maintains Josette Place, a retired member of the festival committee. According to her, the young people behind the violence arrived in groups at the end of the evening at the village hall “with concrete blocks and knives”. “They didn’t come to have fun, fortunately the security guards were there,” assures the woman who says she is “traumatized” by the events.
Monday evening, the Valencia prosecutor’s office affirmed that the suspects were “in the process of being identified”, thanks to interviews with witnesses, analyzes of telephone connections and images from video surveillance systems. “The investigators are proceeding very quickly, giving hope for rapid operational developments,” explained Laurent de Caigny, the Valence prosecutor, in a press release.
Eight others injured
According to information provided by the prosecutor’s office, the “brawl” broke out on Saturday evening after the outbreak of around ten young people who tried to enter the community hall at the end of the evening where an invitational ball was being held. One of them stabbed a security guard who was trying to block him, participants registered for the evening intervened in support.
Mortally wounded by a stab wound, young Thomas took his last breath as emergency services took him to a hospital in Lyon. In addition to this death, the violence left eight injured, including two young people aged 28 and 23, hospitalized in a state of absolute emergency.