Lhe tragedy occurred in front of the Guillaume-Apollinaire high school in Thiais, in the Val-de-Marne, on Monday January 16. A 16-year-old boy was fatally stabbed in the morning during a probable brawl between rival gangs. A suspect of the same age was arrested shortly after in Créteil in front of his establishment.
The facts took place between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. in front of the Guillaume-Apollinaire high school in Thiais, according to the first elements of the flagrance investigation entrusted to the Val-de-Marne judicial police, said the prosecution, confirming information of Current values. The fatal stab wound was delivered to the victim’s heart. 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 prosecution. The scenario of a fight between gangs of rival young people is privileged, specified several sources close to the investigation.
The suspect was arrested around 10 a.m. in front of the Léon-Blum high school, where he was recently educated, and placed in police custody. This young man is from Choisy-le-Roi, according to a police source, which evokes a rivalry between districts of Thiais and Choisy-le-Roi, two neighboring towns. Around 1 p.m., the police were on site to secure the school in Thiais where classes normally take place and the atmosphere is calm, noted a journalist from Agence France-Presse.
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“Historical and current” rivalries
“I saw a group of masked individuals, dressed in black, walking quickly near the school this morning around 8:10 a.m. There were half a dozen of them,” Lila, 18, told Agence France-Presse. years, in terminal STMG. “It often happens the confusion between Thiais and Choisy, I have been in this high school for four years and every year there is something like that”, she added.
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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 supervisors ask us to leave quickly and not hang around in front of the school,” she explains.
“I am traumatized, I put myself in the place of this mother. She left in the morning saying goodbye to her son and she will never see him again, ”commented Cosette, 47, a student mother who came to the school at noon. His son was a friend of the victim: “He cries at home, he is in all his states. He cries, he can’t eat. »
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According to another police source, the rivalries between Choisy and Thiais “are historic and topical”. There would have been “a meeting” between groups from the two cities on December 20, then, more recently, on the night of Friday to Saturday. Fifteen people, but not the suspect of Monday’s attack, were arrested over the weekend by the territorial security of Val-de-Marne, including eleven minors, at the Thiais Village shopping center. These young people were arrested during an armed crowd, which did not cause any injuries.
An interministerial plan to combat the gang phenomenon
“It’s a dramatic event that shocks everyone,” reacted the LR mayor of Thiais, Richard Dell’Agnola. “Between Choisy and Thiais, it’s not a radical rivalry that causes clashes every week or every month. There had been nothing for several months, but there was a certain tension for ten days, ”said for his part to Agence France-Presse the LR mayor of Choisy-le-Roi, Tonino Panetta.
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“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 backdrop of drugs, a love rivalry, questions of reputation”, added the chosen one. “There, we do not yet know the cause but no cause is worth a person being stabbed”, he continued, expressing a “thought for the parents of the victims”.
Brawls in Paris and Île-de-France have caused several deaths of young people in recent years, especially in the neighboring department of Essonne or the capital. In November, a 14-year-old was killed in Yvelines and another stabbed in Paris during a brawl between rival gangs. In June 2021, the government launched an interministerial plan to combat this phenomenon.