Calls for calm were launched on Saturday in Saint-Denis during a gathering in memory of a 14-year-old teenager killed with a knife on Wednesday, in a particularly tense context in the largest city of Seine-Saint-Denis. In intense cold but under a beautiful winter sun, several hundred people, including many local elected officials, gathered in front of City Hall to honor the memory of 14-year-old Sedan. The teenager was stabbed to death Wednesday evening on the line 13 platform, at the Basilique de Saint-Denis metro station.
“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!” , exhorted the deceased’s big brother, Mory, into the microphone in front of a crowd mainly made up of young people.
A 19-year-old young man went to the Saint-Denis judicial police on Thursday afternoon for this homicide. His custody is due to end on Saturday. Sedan’s death comes at a time when nerves are on edge in the city of 113,000 inhabitants, with an increase in altercations between young people from different neighborhoods in recent days. It is not currently known whether the murder is directly linked to these clashes.
“Saint-Denis has become nonsense”
The same morning of the murder, a high school student from Saint-Denis was seriously injured with a baseball bat in an attack near his school. He is currently in an induced coma. “It’s become nonsense, Saint-Denis! There are fights, there are deaths. We have to stop all this!”, lamented to AFP a teenager attending the same college as Sedan, present at the tribute with comrades.
The socialist town hall issued an anti-regroupment decree valid until Monday, and the police force was preventively reinforced in transport and throughout the territory of the municipality. The municipality also called on all parents to keep their children at home this weekend.
“We want to condemn the use of violence which is unfortunately spreading more and more in all its forms,” declared PS Mayor Mathieu Hanotin from the podium, mourning the “absolute tragedy” that is the “death of a child”. Once again on Friday, “attempted altercations” took place again in the city, some of them in the name of “revenge”, which led to around twenty preventive arrests by the police, according to Mathieu Hanotin.