The facts occurred in the Devèze district on Tuesday evening. Two individuals are wanted after setting fire to their vehicle.
“But Béziers is not Nîmes and even less Marseille! Violence is becoming commonplace and it’s scary”. Confused, red-eyed, this young individual from the Devèze district, in sock sandals and a branded bag slung over the shoulder, still can’t believe it. And yet. His city is now overtaken by the long litany of blood crimes linked to drug trafficking which affects Occitania.
Because after the Nîmes shootings last week, in which a ten-year-old child, a collateral victim, then a young drug dealer, an 18-year-old “charcoal worker”, lost their lives, the sound of the Kalashnikov resonated in Béziers Tuesday evening. With one dead and one injured in the end.
“I heard loud bursts of noise, but they weren’t firecrackers,” sighs a young man from rue Jean Franco, where the tragedy took place. According to the first elements of the investigation of the DTPJ (territorial direction of the judicial police), it is in front of the point of deal, the “oven” of this district, located in front of a bakery-grocery store, that the shooting erupted around 11:45 p.m. Two individuals reportedly got out of a vehicle and attacked two young people who were near a car.
One Fouad E., 21 years old since the beginning of August, was seriously injured in the chest. Relatives immediately transported him to Béziers hospital where he died a few tens of minutes later. He was a butcher in the halls located a few hundred meters from where he died.
“He had done some bullshit but it was over”
“He’s a young man from the neighborhood who had done stupid things but it had been over for a year, he worked as a butcher and he was to get married” assures one of his friends, appalled.
“He’s a collateral victim, he was there in the wrong place, at the wrong time, tell him he had nothing to do with it!” launch two young people busy rolling a joint a few meters from the crime scene, this Wednesday at the end of the morning.
For his part, Raphaël Balland, the prosecutor of Béziers, indicates that Fouad E. was “known to justice in particular for facts related to drug trafficking”.
The second victim was very lucky. This individual was injured “only” in the calf and taken to the hospital.
The injured man flees the hospital
But, on Wednesday, taking advantage of a cigarette break, he chose to flee. In front of the police, he assured that he had been hit “by chance” and that he was not aware of anything.
“He was already known to our services” assures a policeman.
On the spot, forensic identification proceeded to the statements of the various casings, in particular in a Peugeot 407 of a third affected by several impacts. About fifty were found, of caliber 9 mm and 7.62 used in Kalashnikovs.
Vehicle found burnt down
And while the prosecution has opened a preliminary investigation for “assassination” and “attempted assassination”, two individuals seen on the scene are actively sought.
A black “4X4” vehicle which would belong to them, was found burned in Villeneuve-lès-Béziers.
The place, the weapons used, the mode of action: everything suggests that the deal point is at the center of the shooting. With the fear for the inhabitants that the center of gravity of the settling of accounts continues to move from Marseille, towards Nîmes and Béziers.
“No city in the South is spared”
“We are on an unfortunately classic pattern of settling scores with the circulation of Kalashnikovs against a background of narcotics. No city in the South is spared by this circulation of narcotics, either cannabis or cocaine depending on the location” reacts Bruno Bartoccetti, delegate of the South Zone of the Unity-SGP-Police union.
The CRS8, specializing in securing neighborhoods affected by deal points, which had been deployed in Marseille and Nîmes, partly arrived in Béziers on Wednesday evening.
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