Four young adults, aged 18 to 20, were indicted and imprisoned for murder in an organized gang, nearly six months after the death of Lucas, 17, beaten at the end of July in Fleury-Mérogis (Essonne), said Saturday the Evry prosecutor’s office contacted by AFP. This brings the number of people prosecuted in this investigation to sixteen.
Beaten up in the street
These four suspects, as well as five other young people already presented to an investigating judge on Wednesday and Thursday, had been arrested at the start of the week during a wave of arrests of ten people in Evry, Draveil and Les Lisses. One of them was released at the end of his police custody, said the prosecution. The four suspects presented Friday evening to an examining magistrate were remanded in custody.
These young men are implicated in the murder of Lucas, a teenager residing in the small town of Fleury-Mérogis, 25 km south of Paris. The teenager had been beaten up in the middle of the street on July 26 before dying the next day. His death had occurred following a brawl between gangs from Evry and Fleury.
The victim was not involved in the brawl
According to Lucas’ uncle, who then testified to AFP, his nephew was not involved in these clashes, but had “just left his house to go to a friend’s house” when he was violently attacked. . A version supported by the mayor (PCF) Olivier Corzani, describing a “calm and gentle” teenager, who had found himself “at the wrong time in the wrong place”. These new indictments are in addition to seven others, which occurred on August 11 and 12, following the opening of a judicial investigation. Seven young men, aged 18 to 20, had been imprisoned for murder in an organized gang.
Essonne, south of Paris, is the regular scene of sometimes very violent clashes between young people from neighborhoods or rival cities, but rarely fatal. The origin of the rivalries often remains nebulous. In 2020, according to figures from the Ministry of the Interior, a quarter of the brawls recorded in France took place in this department of around 1.3 million inhabitants.