” Fourteen years old. You realize ? Me, at that age, I played marbles. They get killed. Frédéric was born and has always lived in Aygalades, a city in the 15th arrondissement of Marseille. And like all the locals, he heard the news on Monday morning. In the night and close to his home, shootings broke out in the Marseille city. Three people died a few hours apart, in the city of Castellas in the 15th arrondissement, then near Aygalades, in the city of Frédéric, and finally in the 2nd arrondissement, near the Joliette district.
Over the weekend, 12 people were also injured. And among these victims, very young adolescents: at La Joliette, the young man who died on the night of Sunday to Monday was barely 16 years old. Another 15-year-old boy was targeted in this shooting and is between life and death. The young man had been sentenced for drug trafficking on March 31, three days before this shooting. A third boy, aged 14, was less seriously injured.
“It’s babies”
“It sucks,” sighs Frédéric. It shocks me. It’s babies. I fear for my children. I have two daughters who are 16 and 18. All she has to do is hang out with friends and it can happen to them. It pains me to see that there are young people who are killed just for money. Where are we going ? “I am sad for this lost youth”, abounds Sonia. The young woman lives in Castellas and is responsible for an association there. The shooting took place under his windows. “My son is 17 and he was outside, as it is Ramadan. He was with other friends. When he heard the bullets he was on the stairs and he was scared. He ran. I put myself in the place of mothers. It is not easy. A stray bullet comes quickly. We are not safe. Nothing is in place for young people. »
The mother of the family is one of the dozens of people who responded on Monday to the call of the collective of families to demonstrate in Castellas, just hours after the bloody shootings of the night. This group brings together relatives of victims of score settling in Marseille. Under the sun and the lenses of numerous cameras, between two politicians, about thirty people march behind a banner “Stop the death of our children”, trying to challenge the mothers who are eyeing them from the corner of the street. eye, cloistered in the blocks of buildings in the city. “Don’t look at us, join us!” “Shout protesters. “It’s your children they’re killing, that’s enough, they’re killing our children!” Adds another protester.
“I started at 15”
Because in Marseille, this is not the first time that teenagers have been targeted during these shootings. Far from there. In recent years, the turf war, to recover profitable deal points, has claimed increasingly young victims, sometimes minors. On February 10, a 15-year-old young man was seriously injured by the bullet, in the city of La Paternelle, in the 14th arrondissement. Five days later, a 17-year-old boy, known as a “dealer”, was lynched to death there.
In question, two new joint phenomena. On the one hand, recently, the small hands of drug trafficking such as the “choufs” in charge of surveillance or the “charcoalers”, who deal with the sale, are the first targets of the settling of accounts which, in the past, primarily attacked network heads. However, traffickers are increasingly calling on a young workforce, sometimes minors.
“I started at 15,” Adel told 20 minutes. The 21-year-old young man has always lived in Castellas and says he was one of the links in drug trafficking, before stopping everything at the time of his marriage. “As long as you owe anyone money, it’s up to you to leave. There’s no one sticking a knife to your throat to tell you to stay. Me, I started with the lure of profit as they say, with easy money. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I watched. I saw the seller who was selling. And I was like, ‘Why not be in his place? He is better paid and he takes less risk. I started with weed and ended up with cocaine. I did that for six or seven months. But all this makes me sad, because we must not forget that there are mothers behind, ”explains Adel, posted a few meters from the demonstration.
Behind the banner, in the center of the first line of the procession, Laëtitia is struggling to contain her anger. The young woman lost her nephew in August 2021, killed with an assault rifle at the entrance to the city of Marronniers, in the 14th arrondissement of Marseille, near a drug sales point. He was 14 years old and is, to date, the youngest victim of score settling in Marseille. “It sends shivers down my spine,” says the young woman. Every time we see an assassination on television, it plunges me back into the drama we experienced. This Monday, the public prosecutor of Marseille Dominique Laurens recalled that ten years ago, in Marseille, the average age of victims of score settling was 27 years old. She is 23 years old today.