Nîmes: a man shot dead near a drug sales point, in the presence of his son

Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credit: RICCARDO MILANI / HANS LUCAS / HANS LUCAS VIA AFP 1:39 p.m., February 21, 2024

A man was shot dead near a deal point in Nîmes on Tuesday evening, while his 8-year-old son was in the vehicle targeted by the shooting, and three suspects were arrested on Wednesday, AFP learned from police sources close to the investigation. The events took place around 9:30 p.m. in the Chemin Bas district of Avignon, one of the sectors of the Gard prefecture plagued by poverty and drug trafficking, like those of Mas de Mingue or Pissevin, where Fayed, a 10-year-old boy lost his life on August 21, the victim of a stray bullet during a shooting, also near a deal point.

In a video circulating on social networks, the victim's body appears lying on the ground, right next to his vehicle. According to police sources, the car was targeted by at least three shots. The child was not hit or injured, these sources told AFP. Still according to police sources, a vehicle described as the one borrowed by the shooter(s) was found burned in the nearby town of Rodilhan. The suspected criminals then fled in another vehicle.

Three arrests in Marseille

Three suspects were arrested on Wednesday in the 14th arrondissement of Marseille, in the north of the city, with a fourth individual still on the run, a police source said. According to

, these suspects were traveling in a car in which a Kalashnikov-type weapon was found. When questioned, the Marseille prosecutor's office had not yet confirmed these arrests on Wednesday midday.

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Wednesday morning, the identity of the victim was not specified, nor if she was known to the judicial or police services. Violence due to drug trafficking has been growing sharply in recent years in Nîmes, where three people were shot dead near drug trafficking points in 2023: a 39-year-old man in January, little Fayed in August, then a teenager. aged 18, 48 hours later, in all three cases in Pissevin. According to figures from the former Nîmes prosecutor, Eric Maurel, these settling of scores, now qualified as “narchomicides”, left eight people dead in Nîmes in 2020 and three in 2021, including a 17-year-old teenager.