A woman and a man in their twenties were killed Saturday evening and three people injured when their vehicle was targeted by Kalashnikov shots in the parking lot of a McDonald’s in Marseille, we learned from the parquet. “The five people were in their car in the McDonald’s parking lot when a vehicle came up to them and hit them with a Kalashnikov, the driver and the front passenger died,” and the three passengers in the back , two men and a woman, were injured, two of them seriously, Marseille prosecutor Nicolas Bessone told AFP.
The three men, including the 22-year-old driver, were known “unfavorably to the justice system for drug trafficking and violence in the Toulon region”, he added. The two women, including the 25-year-old passenger, have no criminal record.
The judicial police were informed of these facts, which occurred shortly before 11 p.m. Saturday in the 16th arrondissement of France’s second city, one of the most impoverished. An investigation into assassinations and attempted assassinations by an organized gang and criminal conspiracy has been opened.
45 deaths in Marseille since the start of the year
Among the injured, a 29-year-old man who received bullet holes in the chest was life-threatening, a woman had her thumb torn off and the third, a 19-year-old man, was only slightly injured. On site, investigators found 7.62 caliber cartridge cases, used in particular for weapons such as Kalashnikovs. The identity of the perpetrator(s) was not revealed but a vehicle, which could “probably” belong to them, was found shortly after burned near the scene of the shooting, said the prosecutor.
These two new murders, whose link with the drug trafficking which is plaguing France’s second city has not yet been formally established, come two weeks after the last homicide officially linked by investigators to the war between gangs for control of drug sales points in Marseille which has left more than 45 dead since the start of the year.