Faced with an unprecedented upsurge in settling scores against the background of drug trafficking, the Lyon conurbation fears the “Marseille syndrome”. Tuesday, June 14, around 11:30 p.m., two young people were shot dead in the Duchère district, in the 9e borough. Aged 16 and 20, they were killed with bursts of Kalashnikov assault rifle weapons. The investigators noted on the spot about forty cases of large caliber and noted numerous impacts in the passageway of the building. Which suggests a pursuit before this double assassination. Witnesses report the presence of two shooters, in hoods and black outfits, who fled in a dark minivan. Two other victims, aged 15 and 17, were injured by bullets or shrapnel.
Vengeance, lookouts or targeted lieutenants? Collateral victims? The punitive expedition in connection with drug trafficking is hardly in doubt, according to the first investigations entrusted to the criminal division of the interregional direction of the judicial police. The eighteen-storey building, located at 315, avenue Sakharov, is referenced as an active deal point in the Lyon region. In this sector, a crew from the anti-crime brigade had heard bursts of automatic weapons on the evening of October 25, 2021. First signal of an escalation of violence.
Five months later, on March 19, a 16-year-old boy was seriously injured in the stomach by gunfire, then on April 30, around 3 a.m., gunmen targeted a group gathered around a barbecue, in a nearby square, again injuring a young man. These episodes are part of a very likely turf war, between two clans trying to control the illicit market that has settled in this long block of buildings, according to several police sources.
“It has become dangerous”
For several months, the inhabitants have become accustomed to cohabiting with the traffickers – a lookout had even installed a deck chair on a mound, near a roundabout. “It has become dangerous, I am no longer calm. In the evening, when I return home, I am wary, I have never known this climate, it is not the idea that I have of the Duchère “, confides a resident, who has lived opposite the bar of buildings for more than forty years. “This neighborhood has experienced riots and problems of urban violence in the past, it was social tension. We have never seen shootings in the middle of the street like this,” adds this same resident, who refuses to give her name.
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