“Wesh man, Blois is Los Angeles!” Supermarket vandalized, gas station burned down: the capital of Loir-et-Cher was, on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, the scene of unusual urban violence which erupted after a refusal to comply.
Burnt bitumen, charred car and caddies in front of a degraded Aldi supermarket, opened less than a week earlier. Residents came to do their shopping, dismayed. Better known for its royal castle, the city of Blois experienced a night of infrequent urban violence for a town of this size (46,000 inhabitants).
It all started around 6.30 p.m. with a refusal to comply, during a check by the Anti-Crime Brigade (Bac) in the northern districts of the city. The vehicle fled, ran a red light and collided with two other cars, according to a police source. The driver then managed to escape while his two injured 15 and 18-year-old passengers were transported to hospital.
“Contrary to rumors, no firearms were used to intercept the vehicle,” Blois mayor Marc Gricourt (PS) said in a statement.
According to the prefecture of Loir-et-Cher, these two injured in absolute urgency were hospitalized in Tours and Blois. From sources close to the case, they are both known for delinquency: that of 18 years for twenty acts of common law and that of 15 years for seven acts of common law.
The drivers of the two crashed cars, slightly injured, were also taken to hospital.
Following this accident, urban violence erupted in the evening: barricades, fireworks fire, vehicles set on fire. An Aldi supermarket is damaged by a fire from a car parked nearby and a damaged nursery.
– “violence inexcusable” –
Around 11:00 p.m., an Avia gas station was set on fire. Then a delivery truck is attacked by rioters. One of them takes the wheel and throws it at the police and firefighters, jumping just before the shock. The police fired to try to stop him.
No injuries are to be deplored among the police, according to the prosecution, who said that there had been no arrests during the night.
“It was time to maintain order, while preserving the elements useful for the investigation, immediately entrusted to the judicial police,” Blois public prosecutor Frédéric Chevallier told AFP.
“Such events had not occurred since the fall of 2014”, underlined the mayor, calling for calm after “facts of violence (…) inexcusable”.
“Throughout the evening, rumors, sometimes extravagant, paraded on social networks, the latter obviously did not contribute either to calm or to the truth,” denounced Mr. Gricourt.
Many videos of urban violence have been posted on social networks, showing a burned-out vehicle or the gendarmerie helicopter flying over the city. “Wesh man, Blois is Los Angeles!”, Comments a user on one of the videos, comparing the scene to the video game Grand Theft Auto.
Police officers from the Châteauroux, Orléans and Le Mans police stations were called in as reinforcements. Two squadrons of mobile gendarmes, 50 departmental gendarmes, a helicopter and an antenna of the GIGN (intervention group of the national gendarmerie) were also dispatched to the site, according to the gendarmerie.
Calm returned around 1:00 am. And Wednesday morning, a few vehicles of mobile gendarmes patrolled the northern neighborhoods without incident, noted an AFP journalist.
A press conference by the prosecutor and the prefect was scheduled for 11:30 a.m. at the prefecture.
The Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin followed the situation closely, according to his entourage.
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