Farid, an 18-year-old high school student seriously injured Wednesday morning 17 in a “punitive expedition” near his high school in Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis), died of his injuries on Saturday January 20. This is the second violent death of a young person in this city during the week, the municipality announced in a press release.
His attack took place a few hours before the death in this town of a 14-year-old boy, named Sedan, stabbed to death in the metro. It is not currently known whether the two events are linked.
On Wednesday morning, Farid was standing a few meters from his high school and was preparing to take a baccalaureate test “when a car stopped near [his] height for an operation akin to a punitive expedition,” he said. recounted the city. “The attack was fleeting, cold, indiscriminate and extremely violent with the use of blunt objects,” said the city’s press release.
Altercations between young people on the rise in Saint-Denis
According to a police source contacted Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Friday January 19, the victim was attacked with baseball bats. She had been placed in an artificial coma at the Beaujon hospital in Clichy. Farid died when a gathering was held on Saturday in front of Saint-Denis town hall in memory of Sedan, stabbed to death on the platform of the Basilique-de-Saint-Denis metro station.
This demonstration, which brought together several hundred people and numerous local elected officials, was an opportunity to launch calls for calm in a context of high tensions within the city of 113,000 inhabitants. Altercations between young people from different neighborhoods have increased in recent days in the town, requiring a strengthening of the police force and a ban on gatherings by the town hall until Monday. “Everyone must take the measure of their responsibility to put an end to the cycle of violence,” called the city of Saint-Denis in its press release.
Again on Friday, “attempted altercations” took place in the city, some of which were in the name of “revenge”, which led to around twenty preventive arrests by the police, according to Mayor Mathieu Hanotin, socialist.
“I ask everyone, all their friends, no violence, no revenge! Not in the name of Sedan, not in the name of Saint-Denis, not in the name of a neighborhood that we appropriate! », Urged Sedan’s big brother into the microphone, in front of a crowd mainly made up of young people. “A little brother, a son, lost his life. At 14, listen up, 14,” he said. “I call on you to respect your parents, to listen, not to fight, not to be violent, because it often ends badly! “, he insisted seriously.
The day after Sedan’s murder, a 19-year-old went to the department’s judicial police, responsible for investigating the teenager’s death. At the end of forty-eight hours of police custody, the accused was presented on Saturday evening to an investigating judge of the Bobigny court with a view to possible indictment and incarceration, the Bobigny prosecutor’s office communicated to the ‘AFP. If it seems linked to a “dispute between young people”, its exact nature remains unknown because the suspect “did not speak at all about it” to the investigators, according to the prosecution.