Firearm Shooting in Villerupt, Meurthe-et-Moselle: 5 Injured, Shooter Still at Large

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Midnight ten: Return to calm. In the city center, residents have returned to their homes and the central square, near the church, has regained the calm of before the shooting. Near the porch where the attack occurred, the place is now deserted.

11:15 p.m .: A long-barreled shotgun. “Five victims, including three with vital prognosis, were taken care of,” announced the secretary general, Julien le Goff. “I salute the professionalism of the rescue teams and the first-responder police officers. On the sequence of events, we learn that a total of 25 police officers intervened on the spot before the arrival of the services of the SRPJ from Nancy. “The idea was to secure the premises immediately”. On the shots of 6:30 p.m., it appears that only one shooter was transported by an accomplice. He then fled after firing at his targets. Near the attack, 15 to 20 bullet cases were found. According to the public prosecutor, Catherine Galen, the shooter used a long-barreled rifle emitting bursts of fire. This attack occurred against a background of drug trafficking and settling of scores. The five victims are all between the ages of 16 and 30. In the next few hours, the criminal division of the Nancy prosecutor’s office will be in charge of the file. For the time being the authorities announce that reinforcements of police officers from the districts of Metz and Nancy have already arrived in Villerupt. City patrols will thus be carried out all night and tomorrow, Sunday. This device will be maintained for several days.

11 p.m. The mayor of Villerupt and his deputy, Guillaume Petitclair, leave the police station. The press conference announced by the secretary general of the prefecture of Meurthe-et-Moselle live from the police station will start.

>> Throwback to the firearm attack in Villerupt around 6:30 p.m.

10:48 p.m. A firefighter testifies. First, shortly after 6.30 p.m., two fire crews from Audun-le-Tiche and Villerupt were dispatched to the scene. One of them reports: “Given the number of announced and noted victims, the reinforcements arrived quickly. The victims were isolated immediately, the same for the firefighters in order to protect everyone during the treatment. The four injured were therefore transported to the nursery school and then dispatched to the various hospitals. The victim hit in the head was urgently taken to the Audun-le-Tiche football stadium to be airlifted to Nancy”. For the sake of protection, once they arrived on site, some firemen were equipped with heavy bulletproof vests.

10:40 p.m. State of play. Three hours after the attack, we know more about the condition of the victims, now announced for the time being four in number: among them, a man shot in the head and airlifted to the Nancy University Hospital. Two other wounded by bullets in the chest, declared in a worrying state and transported to the Bel Air hospital in Thionville. A passerby hit in the arm and taken care of at the Hôtel Dieu de Mont-Saint-Martin.

10 p.m. The prefectural authority at the scene of the attack. On the spot, in Villerupt, the secretary general of the prefecture of Meurthe-et-Moselle, Julien Le Goff arrived and a press point is announced in the premises of the police station in about twenty minutes. Before that, place Jeanne-D’Arc, near the porch where the group of young people was targeted by the shots, the mayor of Villerupt, Pierrick Spizak, said, in the preamble, his thoughts for the families of the victims: “We had already alerted the authorities, a fortnight ago, of the situation. We felt that the violence was going cresendo on this drug point known for several years ”. The elected official says he is aware that the police force is suffering but at the same time notes that the situation has been getting worse since the arrival of Darmanin in 2021. “Additional positions are announced in the ranks of the police but must we believe to arrivals without any departures? »

9 p.m. A well-known deal point. Since the shots rang out, the injured were taken care of by the firefighters and transported to the hospital, tongues have been loosened in the city center of Villerupt. In the ranks of local residents, anger is now expressed. A lady who lives in the building a few meters from the place where the attack took place, regrets a situation that has developed over the years: “We see young people sitting here all day. Cars stop and drive off. This is a well-known deal point”. Her neighbor reports having counted two bullet holes in the shutters of her home and above all, found a bullet on her bed!

7 p.m. Hit in the head. They say they heard gunshots, saw seriously injured people. Totally stunned witnesses fed the social networks available to them in real time. This Saturday, May 13, in the same circumstances, shortly after 6:30 p.m. and according to our information, individuals were injured by firearms near Villerupt, in Meurthe-et-Moselle. The events took place in two stages with, in downtown Villerupt, rue Carnot, the start of a shooting targeting a group of two young people stationed under a porch, place Carnot. An “armed man shot straight into the crowd,” a source tells us. Injuring a victim in the head and a passerby in the arm.

Runaway shooter

Shots also targeted a third youth who was in a car stopped in a parking lot at the back of the porch. Then the shooter immediately fled in the vehicle he had arrived in, leaving behind three seriously injured victims, a fourth more lightly. A first episode followed by a second, this time near Audun-le-Tiche where an injured person fled in the car of an informed friend. The idea was to reach the hospital of Esch-sur-Alzette in Luxembourg so that his companion could be quickly taken care of. But seeing a fire truck near the rue du Luxembourg, near a Chinese restaurant and a fast food restaurant, the driver decided to entrust his injured friend to them. The professionals quickly called in help from the sky and the injured man was airlifted. Victims were taken care of this Saturday at the Bel Air hospital in Thionville, at the Hôtel-Dieu de Mont-Saint-Martin and at the CHU de Nancy.

On site, in Villerupt, firefighters from neighboring towns and those from the Moselle departmental center quickly converged. All had gathered in a kind of improvised HQ near the Joseph-Barat nursery school where the victims were taken care of. A large police force was dispatched to the scene. The armed individual disappeared after taking the direction of Esch-sur-Alzette. “I heard the gunshots from my house. There were several shots in a row. It froze my blood. There have been lookouts under the vault of Place Jeanne d’Arc for months… I don’t want my children to grow up here,” testified this Saturday a resident of Villerupt, who has lived in the town for seven years.