Judicial information was opened on Monday in Besançon after two shootings on Friday and Saturday which left one dead in the Planoise district, a frequent scene of violence, announced the public prosecutor Etienne Manteaux.
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A judicial investigation for attempted murder and murder in an organized gang, drug trafficking and criminal association has been opened, said the Besançon magistrate during a press conference. These facts are punishable by “life imprisonment”, he stressed.
Suspected of attempted murder, a 15-year-old teenager was taken into police custody on Saturday and was to be presented Monday afternoon to an investigating judge for his indictment for the shootings last Friday. The prosecution also requested that he be remanded in custody.
This youngster was present during a shooting where another 15-year-old minor was seriously injured in the leg: he gave “unconvincing explanations” concerning his presence at the scene, but admitted to having started selling drugs “for some time,” said the prosecutor.
15 years old
For the prosecution, there is a possible link between these shootings on Friday and those on Saturday, where another teenager, also 15 years old, died after being hit by a bullet in the chest, still in this same neighborhood.
Two scooters, helmets, black clothing and a sawed-off shotgun were found in a nearby underground parking box. For the prosecutor, “we can fear at this time a shooting on December 16 then a response on the 17th, it is a possible reading of the file”.
The magistrate also castigated “the ease with which 15-year-old minors can access weapons” and “a society that is at all materialistic, of appearances”, which leads these young people to think that “through drug trafficking we quickly earn a lot silver”.
Between November 2019 and March 2020, two rival gangs clashed for control of drug trafficking in this Republican reconquest district (QRR): 18 shootings left one dead and eleven injured.
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