One man stabbed and another shot. This is the result of the violence which targeted, in two successive episodes, a night grocery store in Montpellier during the night from Saturday to Sunday. Around 3 a.m., a punitive expedition was first carried out by a group of 5 to 10 people against the manager of this business located in the popular district of Celleneuve, in the west of the city. “The manager was slightly injured by a stab wound to the arm. The attackers also ransacked the grocery store and stole the cash drawer,” the Hérault Departmental Directorate of Public Security told AFP (DDSP 34).
Police personnel in plain clothes (two investigators and two members of the technical police) – not identifiable as police officers – went to the site to carry out the usual findings. And, a little before 4 a.m., the same group of attackers returned near the business, firing four or five shots from a car with a small caliber weapon. According to a police source, this new “assault” injured “an onlooker who was on the scene, and who appears to be a collateral victim.” A small caliber bullet passed through the calf of the victim, whose vital prognosis is not engaged. .
The trail of a commercial dispute
There were no police officers injured and the plainclothes police officers present did not respond to the shots, indicated the DDSP 34, specifying that “during the shots, fired from a vehicle, the police officers protect the manager and the injured person. The investigators continued their findings, protected by police officers who came as reinforcements.
The Montpellier judicial police were seized of the investigation. The theory of a settling of scores against the backdrop of a commercial dispute, racketeering and an attempt to take possession of the premises is favored.