The 24-year-old young woman who was shot at her home on the evening of Sunday, September 10, by shots targeting a drug trafficking point in Marseille has died, the Marseille city prosecutor’s office announced on Tuesday, September 12. Until then, she was in a state of brain death.
The victim, who lived with his mother on the third floor of a building in a housing estate in the 10th arrondissement, had been “transferred to hospital, seriously injured in the head with a life-threatening prognosis,” reports the prosecution in a statement. “The bullet having struck her passed through a wooden plywood located at the bottom of the bay window,” it is explained.
The shootings initially took place around 11 p.m. at a pharmacy in the Saint-Thys city, classified as a priority district, near which it is “usual” for young people to gather in the evening and where “there would be a point of resale of narcotics,” reports the prosecutor. “Secondly, a burst of indiscriminate shooting would have taken place at the time of the departure of the perpetrators,” it is added.
Open investigation
Three other apartments were affected: “That of a lady living on the 4th floor aged 79, that of a man living on the 5th floor aged 71 and that of a lady living in another building above the 86-year-old pharmacy,” communicated the public prosecutor of Marseille, Dominique Laurens. These three people were not injured.
An investigation, entrusted to the Marseille judicial police, was opened on charges of “assassination”, “attempted assassination by an organized gang and criminal association with a view to the commission of a crime”. For the prosecutor “even if the young woman appears to be a “collateral” victim, the intention of premeditated homicide is characterized by the act.”
Since January, around forty people have been killed in violence linked to drug trafficking in France’s second city. Among them are a priori at least two collateral victims. On May 10, a 43-year-old woman was shot and killed in the city of Saint-Joseph (14th arrondissement), and on April 24 a 63-year-old man was shot at a snack bar located next to a drug dealer point. the city of Busserine (14th arrondissement) while he was playing cards.
