REPORTAGE
"Me, I'm not yet ready to have a music party again. At least not here". Maël, like many other young people from Nantes, remained marked by the events of the night from June 21 to 22, 2019. A year ago, on Quai Wilson, the music festival ended tragically with an intervention by police during which at least 14 young people fell in the Loire. At daybreak, one of them, Steve Maia Caniço, did not answer the many calls from his loved ones on the phone.
"As soon as I see the Loire, my heart is aching and my voice is trembling"
"Steve without a battery, ok, but not without warning," says Maël at the microphone of Europe 1. At 24, the young man, a youth worker, had his whole life ahead of him. His name, and the question "Where's Steve?" have become a slogan throughout France to denounce, a year before the movement against police violence. After years of celebration of music celebrated on quai Wilson, controversies followed one another in the summer of 2019 about the location considered dangerous and the police intervention perceived as disproportionate in front of young people having fun in a neighborhood without dwellings.
Steve's body was finally recovered a month later, on July 29. Since then, his relatives have always wondered what happened that night. "If it is, he fell first or he followed them. If it is, he was jostled by someone running," says Maël. These questions, the investigation has still not answered.
"I have rising anger"
In the meantime, Caro and Manon remain as "haunted" by this river, which has engulfed their friend. "As soon as I see the Loire, it's Steve, my heart is pinching and my voice is shaking", says one at the microphone of Europe 1. "My sternum, it turns into a metal bar which compresses more and more until I find it hard to breathe. I have mounting anger and ants in my head. "
Caro, Manon and Maël will however return to the Quai Wilson on Sunday afternoon, which will be the end point of a white march that they organized in memory of Steve. "Scheduled at 3 pm, the demonstration was the subject of a declaration in good and due form in prefecture and is authorized in the respect of the sanitary measures related to the epidemic of Covid-19", indicated the prefecture in a communicated. Nearly 3,000 people have announced their intention to participate.