After identical facts in Grenoble or Nantes, ten people filed a complaint in Béziers (Hérault), victims of bites during parties in two night establishments. An investigation has been opened.
They are young girls and young men, sometimes minors. They claimed to have felt a sting in different places of the body (thighs, buttocks, ankles, arms, shoulder, back) while they were in two establishments, on the night of April 17 to 18, explained in a press release the prosecutor, Raphaël Balland.
“It was very painful,” one of the victims, 23, told AFP, hit “in the thigh, up to the sciatic nerve” last weekend. The young woman claimed to have been taken to the emergency room by friends after feeling unwell, “eyes rolled back”. She also said she was “paralyzed on the right side for two days.”
These bites mainly “caused mild symptoms” such as hot flushes, nausea, malaise or loss of balance, said the prosecutor.
A call to other potential victims
Nine complaints were filed for these acts committed on the night of April 17 to 18 and another by a young woman for a “similar act (which) would have been committed on the night of April 6 to 7” in one of the two establishments.
About thirty handrails were also registered at the Béziers police station, said a source familiar with the matter. An investigation for the administration of harmful substances has been opened.
The Béziers prosecutor called on potential other victims of similar acts to come forward as quickly as possible to the police, the gendarmerie or the nearest hospital. “Some substances such as GHB (the ‘date-rape drug’) are no longer detectable after just a few hours,” he said.
Two new complaints in Grenoble
Shortly before these facts, the parquet floor of Grenoble (Isère) had indicated on Wednesday that they had opened an investigation of the same type after five young women and two young men claimed to have felt a sting during evenings in nightclubs or a concert in April in the city or in its region.
Two new complaints have also been filed by young women, one for injection (resulting in the theft of a telephone, keys, watch and bank card), the other for a substance directly poured into her glass, while she was out smoking.
The Nantes prosecutor’s office had done the same after reports of stings by 23 young people who had attended eight night establishments.