A man, already convicted of drug trafficking, was shot several times during the night from Monday to Tuesday near a city in the impoverished northern districts of Marseille, AFP learned from a police source and the prosecution. This man was hit by “several bullets” in the 15th arrondissement of the city, said a police source, confirming initial information from the daily La Provence.
A 48th homicide linked to drug trafficking in Marseille?
Investigators found 27 cases of caliber 7.62 on site, said the Marseille prosecutor’s office in a press release, specifying that they had opened an investigation, entrusted to the judicial police, into the counts of “assassination by an organized gang and criminal association with a view to the commission of a crime.” The victim was “presumably” aged 42 and was known to the police and justice services, in particular for “having been convicted of drug trafficking in Marseille”, according to the prosecution.
The shooter, a passenger in a vehicle, used a long weapon such as an assault rifle before fleeing, according to a police source. The events allegedly took place on rue de Lyon, near the Cabucelle district. At the end of July, a young man of 17, unknown to the police, died after being shot several times in the chest in the city of Tourmarines, in the same district.
If the link of this new homicide with the drug trafficking which is plaguing France’s second city were to be established, it would be the 48th homicide linked to this trafficking committed in Marseille since the start of the year. The last “narchomicide” (a term invented by the former public prosecutor of Marseille Dominique Laurens and taken up by his successor Nicolas Bessone) in Marseille dates back to November 13: a man in his twenties was fatally injured by bullets in a city. In recent months, the port city has been the scene of a bloody “vendetta” between two clans, in the words of the Bouches-du-Rhône police chief, Frédérique Camilleri.