Europe 1 with AFP
modified to
9:13 p.m., January 16, 2023
A 16-year-old teenager was fatally stabbed Monday morning outside his high school in Thiais in Val-de-Marne during a probable brawl between rival gangs, a case in which three minors were arrested and taken into custody. The facts took place shortly after 8 a.m. near the Guillaume Apollinaire high school in Thiais. According to the first testimonies, the attackers, between five and ten, “were in a situation of watch and waiting” near the school, indicated the prosecutor of the Republic of Créteil, Stéphane Hardouin, during a press conference. .
The fatal stab wound was at the level of the heart of the victim, who was unknown to justice. Also present during the assault, another 16-year-old high school student was injured in the thigh. His vital prognosis is not engaged. “According to the witnesses, the attackers pursued the two victims for a few tens of meters,” said the prosecutor, adding that a knife had been discovered nearby.
The scenario of a fight between rival gangs privileged
The scenario of a fight between gangs of young people from rival districts of Thiais and Choisy-le-Roi, two neighboring towns, is favored by the investigators. A first suspect, from Choisy-le-Roi, was arrested around 10:00 a.m. at his home. He is particularly known to justice “for a series of acts of aggravated violence” which earned him an indictment in a separate case dating from 2021, said Stéphane Hardouin.
This 16-year-old teenager was placed under judicial control “with a ban on going to Orly and Thiais, except for the needs of his schooling”, specified the prosecutor. He had also filed a complaint for violence suffered in December 2022 during a brawl near the high school where Monday’s attack took place. Following the latter, an investigation in flagrance was opened in particular for “intentional homicide committed in an organized gang” and entrusted to the judicial police of Val-de-Marne.
Two other minor suspects arrested
Two other suspects, aged 15 and 16, were arrested, said the Créteil prosecutor’s office in the evening. Classes took place normally on Monday at the Guillaume-Apollinaire high school, where the police deployed to secure the premises. “I saw a group of half a dozen masked individuals, dressed in black, walking quickly near the school this morning around 8:10 a.m.,” Lila, 18, a senior high school student, told AFP. STMG.
“It often happens the confusion between Thiais and Choisy, I’ve been in this high school for four years and every year there is something like that”, she added. According to the high school student, “a few months ago there was already a fight” in front of the establishment, where security had been reinforced: “since this year, when we leave class, the administration and the supervisors ask us to leave quickly and not hang around in front of the school”. “I am traumatized, I put myself in this mother’s place. She left in the morning saying goodbye to her son and she will never see him again”, commented Cosette, 47, a mother of a student who came at noon. in front of the high school.
“A dramatic event that shocks everyone”
His son was a friend of the victim: “He is crying at home, he is in all his states. He cannot eat”. According to a police source, the rivalries between Choisy and Thiais “are historic and topical”. Last Friday, the police intervened when around fifteen people, but not the victims of Monday’s attack, were traveling from Thiais towards Choisy, supported Stéphane Hardouin. Some were carrying a knife or a hammer. Four of these young people were brought to justice
“It’s a dramatic event that shocks everyone,” reacted the LR mayor of Thiais, Richard Dell’Agnola. “We are in the context of gang rivalry, of such and such a city, as exists almost everywhere in France for which all pretexts are good: a rivalry against a background of drugs, a love rivalry, questions of reputation”, said for his part to AFP the mayor LR of Choisy-le-Roi, Tonino Panetta, by sharing a “thought for the parents of the victims”.
Brawls in Paris and Ile-de-France have caused several deaths of young people in recent years, especially in the neighboring department of Essonne or in the capital. In June 2021, the government launched an interministerial plan to combat this phenomenon.