Three of the suspects arrested Monday as part of the investigation into the death of young Thomas, stabbed during a village festival in Drôme, were indicted on Thursday March 14.
Six other suspects, arrested during the same raid, were released and two are still in police custody as part of the investigation opened after the tragedy that occurred on the night of November 18 to 19 in Crépol, according to a press release from the Valencia prosecutor, Laurent de Caigny.
“The public prosecutor has requested the indictment of the three people presented with criminal counts of voluntary homicide and attempted voluntary homicides by an organized gang”, the same charges as those held against nine young suspects already indicted in November in this file, he added.
Eleven people were arrested Monday morning by gendarmes, almost four months after the events. “In this investigation, the interest is to have everyone’s perspective (…) so that we can compare the words of each person and know what the real responsibilities are,” the head of the company said on Tuesday. national gendarmerie, Christian Rodriguez, on RTL.
The investigation has not yet made it possible to determine the exact circumstances of the teenager’s death, none of the first nine indicted admitting to having dealt the fatal blow to young Thomas.
Deadly brawl
This 16-year-old high school student was fatally injured on the night of November 18 to 19, 2023 by a stabbing 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”.
The party had turned into a “brawl”, in the words of the Valence prosecutor, when young people from Romans-sur-Isère and who had not registered for the evening, some being judged “hostile” by witnesses, were involved in an altercation inside the room, before the clashes continued outside.
Called to the scene, firefighters treated seventeen people, eight injured, four of whom were in serious condition. Thomas, junior captain of the Romans-Péage rugby team, died on the way to the hospital.
The young people of Romans-sur-Isère inflicted blows, some stabbing, and nine of the 104 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 identity of those indicted.
