A 22-year-old man, known to the police and the courts for drug trafficking, died after being hit by gunfire on Friday evening in Marseille, the Marseille prosecutor’s office told Agence France-Presse on Saturday, December 30 ( AFP).
Friday around 9:15 p.m., in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant in the north of Marseille, this young Marseillais was hit by “several shots from an assault rifle type weapon in the legs then in the head then that he was nearby and then in his vehicle,” detailed the Marseille prosecutor’s office. The victim was given resuscitation on the spot and then transported with a “life threatening condition” to North Hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries.
“A vehicle that could correspond to that of the perpetrator, declared stolen, was discovered on fire,” underlined the prosecution. The investigation, opened for “murder by an organized gang, criminal conspiracy and deliberate damage to property by fire”, was entrusted to the judicial police.
On the night of December 25 to 26, a man already convicted of drug trafficking was shot several times in this same street in the 15th arrondissement, near the Cabucelle district.
If the link of this new homicide with the drug trafficking which is plaguing France’s second city were to be established, the number of “narchomicides” would rise to 49, including seven minors, in Marseille since the start of the year, according to a cross-count by the prosecution and the AFP. A much higher number, therefore, than the two previous records of 2022 and 2016, which left around thirty dead.
The war between drug traffickers for control of points of sale in the city’s housing estates also left 118 injured, including 18 minors, said the public prosecutor of Marseille, Nicolas Bessone, at a press conference, just before Christmas. .
