Eleven people were arrested on Monday March 11 by the gendarmes as part of the investigation into the death of Thomas, a teenager stabbed during a party in Crépol (Drôme), Agence France-Presse learned from a source close to the file, thus confirming information from Le Parisien. The Valencia public prosecutor’s office refused to communicate officially.
Nine suspects, including three minors, were arrested and indicted in November in this case for “organized gang murder”, “attempted murder” or “voluntary violence committed in a meeting”.
Thomas, a 16-year-old high school student, was fatally injured on the night of November 18 to 19, 2023 by a stab at the end of a ball in this village in Drôme. The lethal stabbing had been carried out outside the Crépol village hall which hosted around four hundred people for the village’s “winter ball”.
Circumstances to be clarified
The party had turned into a “brawl”, in the words of the Valence prosecutor, when young people from Romans-sur-Isère who had not registered for the evening, some deemed “hostile” by witnesses, were involved in an altercation inside the room, before clashes outside.
Called to the scene, firefighters treated seventeen people, eight injured, four of whom were in serious condition. Thomas, a 16-year-old high school student and junior captain of the Romans-Péage rugby team, died on the way to the hospital.
During these latest communications, the prosecution had clarified that the exact circumstances of the tragedy remained to be clarified, none of the suspects admitting to having carried out the fatal blow.
The young people of Romans-sur-Isère inflicted blows, some stabbed them, and nine of the one hundred and four witnesses heard by the gendarmes reported hostile remarks “to white people.” Faced with the mobilization of the ultra-right, which at the time had increased its actions to denounce “anti-white racism”, the prosecution always refused to disclose the identities of those indicted.
