After the stabbing death of three young men, aged 16, 18 and 20, in Angers, a suspect was arrested. The prosecutor gave some information on the case.
A suspect was taken into custody on Saturday after three young men, including a 16-year-old minor, were stabbed to death overnight Friday to Saturday during a brawl in downtown Paris. Angers. The 32-year-old suspect was arrested overnight, according to the prosecution.
The three young men killed are aged 16, 18 and 20, Angers prosecutor Éric Bouillard told AFP. The brawl, which took place in three stages, reportedly broke out around 1 a.m. in the city center of Angers and ended shortly before 3 a.m. on the esplanade Cœur de Maine, near the castle of Angers. “The police intervened for the first time around 1:00 am” following a call for young girls bothered by the suspect. “But when the police arrived, the man was gone and it was calm,” Éric Bouillard told AFP late Saturday afternoon.
The victims each received “a stab wound to the chest”
A little later, “he comes back again and he is pushed away quite firmly by members of the group (…) He comes back a third time” towards the group, this time with a knife, continued the magistrate, according to whom ” it is not known” if the three young people killed are those who had previously ousted him. “The altercation is not linked to a disturbance”, as mentioned at first, said the prosecutor.
Called at 2:50 a.m. in the “Coeur de Maine” sector, the police discovered “a large and sometimes aggressive crowd, with projectiles thrown at the intervening services”, Eric Bouillard said in a press release in the morning. “Victim each of a stab wound to the chest”, the three victims were “in cardiorespiratory arrest” when help arrived who could not resuscitate them, according to the magistrate.
“The person designated as being the author of the stab wounds” was first arrested “by people present” on the scene, then suffering “violence before being taken care of by the municipal police and then the emergency services” , according to the prosecutor. Hospitalized, the suspect was taken into custody but was unable to speak on Saturday morning. The prosecutor clarified on Saturday evening that the suspect “was not seriously injured”, without being able to specify whether he could have been heard during the day.
A suspect from Sudan, a political refugee
The investigation was entrusted to the police officers of the departmental security of Angers.
According to Ouest-France, two of the three deceased young people had played, since their 6-7 years and until a year ago, rugby within SCO Rugby d’Angers. Even after their departure, “we often saw them on Saturdays, they came to see the matches,” club president Jean-Benoît Portier told the daily. Like many members of SCO Rugby, the two rugby players, according to the daily, were from Wallis-and-Futuna, a French overseas community located in the South Pacific.
As for the suspect, according to France Info, he is from Sudan and resides in France in a regular situation after having obtained the status of political refugee. Questioned by AFP, the prosecutor did not confirm this information relating to the nationalities of the protagonists.
A psychological unit had been set up. The Angers University Hospital announced at the end of the day on Twitter that 23 people were welcomed there during the day. “Fear and sadness after the brawl in #Angers. My thoughts are with the families of the victims”, reacted on Twitter the former mayor (Horizons) of Angers, Christophe Béchu, who became Minister for the Ecological Transition at the beginning of July and of Territorial Cohesion in the new government of Elisabeth Borne. Inaugurated in 2019 and close to the city center, the esplanade Cœur de Maine, where the events took place, is a vast recreational green space of 3,000 m2 on the banks of the Maine River, very busy especially on sunny days.
The city announced on Saturday the “closure of the esplanade for the time of the investigation and the necessary meditation”.