The 23-year-old actor is suspected of having driven the scooter that transported Rayanne’s killer, a 14-year-old teenager from Marseille, in 2021.
Dylan Robert moved from the shadows to the light in 2019, when he was awarded the César for Most Promising Actor for his role in the film Scheherazade. “Today, it’s no longer delinquency that attracts me, it’s cinema,” he promised in the columns of the magazine First.
But last November, the Marseille actor was indicted for “attempted assassination” and “assassination”, according to information published by the newspaper The world Monday December 11 and confirmed by BFM Marseille Provence.
• Suspected of having led the killer to the crime scene
Now 23 years old, Dylan Robert is suspected of being involved in the death of a teenager named Rayanne.
On August 18, 2021, the 14-year-old boy was in the city of Marronniers, not far from a drug sales point. He goes to get a sandwich when he is shot with an assault rifle. The teenager succumbs to the impacts. Two other children, including an 8-year-old, were injured by the shots.
The assailant was on a scooter when he opened fire and then fled. Justice suspects Dylan Robert of having been the driver.
According to our colleagues from Le Monde, it was the telephone tapping and the sound system of the actor’s apartment which led him to be suspected in this affair.
• Dylan Robert “vigorously disputes the facts”
The day after the revelation in the press of the indictment of Dylan Robert, his lawyer, Me Valérie Coriatt, published a press release, calling firstly for respect for the presumption of innocence of his client, in the same way as that of the secrecy of the instruction. She also adds that the Marseille actor “vigorously contests the facts for which he is indicted”.
According to Me Valérie Coriatt, the file is at this stage devoid of “any tangible element. She assures that she “will not fail to assert her client’s rights and to contest within the legal deadlines any possible procedural irregularities or /and to present a possible request for dismissal from examination”.
Dylan Robert’s counsel is surprised that this indictment comes more than two years after the facts and that it is based “on elements already known to the investigators and brought to the charge of Mr. Dylan Robert recently, even though that he comes to the end of another correctional committal mandate.”
“Finally, the defense disputes that its client can be indicted for facts of such seriousness which do not correspond at all to his profile on the basis of occasional rumors which in terms of evidence have no value and are not , as Victor Hugo said, that ‘the smoke of noise’.”
• An actor with a criminal record
Originally from the popular district of Belle-de-Mai, Dylan Robert draws a line under his schooling very early on. It did not take long for him to become known to the police and the justice system for acts of delinquency, particularly snatching.
In 2018, while in a juvenile detention center, an educator spoke to him about the casting of Jean-Bernard Marlin’s next film, entitled Scheherazade. He ended up being selected to play Zachary in this feature film.
Dylan Robert was only 18 years old when he became known to the general public and won a César award. Which will open the doors to other productions. But his rise does not end his troubles with the law, consistent sources tell BFMTV.
In January 2020, he was arrested for “robbery with a weapon” and “robbery with violence”. Convicted for these facts, he spent 13 months in prison then was placed under judicial supervision.
Two years after his arrest, he received a new sentence, this time to 30 months’ imprisonment, for two “violent thefts” which had occurred the previous year in Aix-en-Provence. He is placed in pre-trial detention.
Before the judge, he claimed to have wanted to finance a bail due in the context of another case. “Yes, I’m stupid, I’ll tell you straight,” he admits at the bar, according to comments reported by Le Monde.
In April 2022, Dylan Robert was this time indicted for “criminal conspiracy to prepare assassinations”. He was also to be tried last November for acts of “violent theft in meetings” but the trial was postponed until March 2024.
• New appearances in the cinema
However, these backgrounds do not prevent him from reappearing in cinemas or on online platforms. He notably plays a secondary role in the film On the black pathspublished in 2023.
Contacted by BFM Marseille Provence, various members of the cast of Shéhérazade, but also educators, refused to comment on the indictment of Dylan Robert in the investigation into the death of young Rayanne.
Only one of his acquaintances spoke on condition of anonymity: “He killed his career while he had gold served on a silver platter. This chance to be able to live elsewhere.”
• “I cried with joy”: the emotion of Rayanne’s family
Rayanne’s family expressed their emotion this Tuesday, December 12, after the indictment of Dylan Robert in this case.
“It was the police who informed us. They called us to tell us that two people were going to be indicted,” testifies Laetitia Linon, member of the Collective of Families of Assassination Victims and aunt of Rayanne, on the Bonsoir Marseille set this Tuesday, December 12.
“I cried with joy. My family did too. Because we had been waiting for more than two years and we thought that the case was going to be forgotten,” she remembers.
Today, the emotion felt has weakened. “We realize that it’s just the beginning in fact. We must not forget that he is presumed innocent. That it’s just an indictment (…). It’s not the shooter. The shooter has still not been found. That we are still not at the trial. That if there is a trial, it does not mean that there is a conviction behind it.”
Laetitia Linon says she is “waiting”, after what she describes as a “glimmer of hope”. Not only for her and her loved ones, but also for other families of shooting victims. Because “there are not many cases that are elucidated”.