Jean-Luc Boujon with AFP
modified to
7:19 a.m., November 21, 2023
Suspects are “in the process of being identified” after the brawl during which Thomas, a 16-year-old teenager, was killed on Saturday evening, in front of the village hall in Crépol (Drôme). The 10 or 15 young attackers who caused a general fight and attacked several participants of the ball, could mainly come from the Monnaie district in Romans-sur-Isère, located twenty minutes from the small village. A sensitive neighborhood, well known in the region for its problems of delinquency and insecurity, against a backdrop of drug trafficking.
“Young people have the impression that they have a free path”
“The investigators are proceeding very quickly, giving hope for rapid operational developments,” said Laurent de Caigny, the Valence prosecutor, in this press release. Around fifty witnesses have already been interviewed by the gendarmes, as many have yet to be interviewed, analyzes of connections to telephone relays and images from video surveillance systems are underway to collect consistent elements on possible suspects, according to the same source .
The Monnaie district is the dread of the Drôme police officers. However, we are in a small town. Romans-sur-Isère has 33,000 inhabitants. Despite everything, there is more delinquency here than in Valence, its neighbor twice as large, explains Christophe Alex, from the SGP Police union in Drôme. “It’s often Romans that poses more problems for us than Valence. Young people commit a lot of urban violence, they have the impression that they have a free path… For our colleagues, it’s sometimes complicated to return to this neighborhood,” he explains.
“What keeps me here is the price of the rent!”
A distressing observation confirmed by Catherine who has lived at La Monnaie for ten years. “We are not at peace… Four months ago, during the riots, everything was destroyed, the roofs and the trash cans burned… There are drugs everywhere. What keeps me here is the price of the rent! Otherwise I have no reason to stay there, it’s too dangerous, it’s scary” she says at the microphone of Europe 1. “No one comes here anymore”, adds Catherine, ” neither the police nor the politicians.” However, this neighborhood was still the symbol of a certain social diversity 40 years ago.
If the Monnaie district is at the heart of the investigators’ hypotheses, it is “false to assert that the hostile group would be made up of individuals all from the same city and the same district”, underlined the prosecutor Monday evening.