The 27-year-old man who died in Marseille on the night of Saturday to Sunday, enamelled with riots, possibly the victim of a “flash-ball type” projectile shot according to the prosecution, had been found unconscious after falling on a scooter , we learned on Wednesday from a police source.
This man was found in Cours Lieutaud, an avenue just a few hundred meters from the Old Port and the shopping streets in the heart of the city where several dozen businesses were looted overnight from Saturday to Sunday, amid anger after the death of young Nahel on June 27 in Nanterre, in the Paris suburbs.
“Some kind of impact on his chest”
He was found “after what a witness described as a scooter accident” and while it seems “there were no police present” nearby, still according to this witness, said this police source to AFP.
It was during the autopsy carried out on the victim, who died at the Timone hospital, that “a kind of impact on his chest” was confirmed, added this source, specifying that from now on, the investigation will have to determine “the journey of this young man on the evening”, to try to understand when and where he could have been touched.
Flash ball shooting
As early as Sunday morning, the Marseille firefighters had mentioned to AFP the suspicious death of a young man who had “felt unwell” and had fallen on a scooter, without however linking it directly with the looting that had taken place during the night. The firefighters had specified that when they intervened with this victim, the context was not tense during Lieutaud.
In her email Tuesday evening announcing the opening of a judicial investigation in this case for “fatal blows with the use or threat of a weapon”, the public prosecutor of Marseille Dominique Laurens had underlined as “probable a death caused by a violent shock to the thorax caused by the firing of a flash-ball type projectile”.
At this stage of the investigation, “it is not possible to determine the place” where the victim would have been the victim of this shot, added the prosecutor, also insisting on the fact that if “events of the riot and looting type were taking place that night in the area”, it was impossible to determine “if the victim had participated in it or even if he had circulated in this area”. Both the judicial police and the IGPN have been seized of the investigation into this case, confirmed the prosecution on Wednesday.