“The investigation will reveal whether these are the people who are the perpetrators of this heinous crime. » The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, announced Tuesday, November 21, the arrest of seven people “around Toulouse” as part of the investigation opened after the death Saturday evening of Thomas, a 16-year-old high school student, in Crépol (Drôme) during a municipal festival.
Gérald Darmanin, who spoke during questions to the government in the National Assembly, stressed that these arrests took place on Tuesday after “seventy hearings” carried out by the gendarmerie.
According to the information communicated by the prosecution, it all started on the night of Saturday to Sunday after the irruption of around ten young people who tried to enter the community hall of Crépol where an invitational ball was being held. One of them stabbed a security guard who was trying to block him, participants registered for the evening intervened in support and a fight ensued outside the building.
Seriously injured by a stab wound, young Thomas died while emergency services took him to a hospital in Lyon.
“Quite incredible violence”
In addition to this death, the violence left eight people injured, including two young people aged 28 and 23 who were hospitalized in a state of absolute emergency. Their vital prognosis is no longer in jeopardy, according to a source close to the matter at Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The spokesperson for the national gendarmerie described Tuesday morning a “brawl of quite unprecedented violence for a village of five hundred inhabitants”, refusing to use the term “brawl” used by the Valencia prosecutor’s office to describe the facts . “A fight is two groups of young people who decided to make an appointment and confront each other, here, we are not in that configuration,” she said.
“It was not a fight but an attack: they came with the desire to kill,” said Josette Place, a retired member of the festival committee contacted by AFP on Tuesday. According to her, the young people behind the violence arrived in groups at the end of the evening at the village hall “with concrete blocks and knives”. “They didn’t come to have fun, fortunately the security guards were there,” assures the woman who says she is “traumatized” by the events.