The drama took place on the platform of the Stade de Gerland metro station, in Lyon (Rhône), the one which served the former stadium of the Olympique Lyonnais.
Around 12:15 am, on the night of Saturday 19 to Sunday 20 September, a fight degenerated, leaving one dead.
Two against one, two men armed with a knife and broken bottles attacked a young man in his twenties, abandoned in a bloodbath.
Two witnesses to the tragedy tried to save him, but he succumbed to his injuries.
They are the ones who sounded the alert and communicated to the police the report of the attackers.
A few minutes later, on the surface, the BAC arrested two suspects, two young foreigners, one aged 30, the other in his twenties.
"They were in a state of intoxication and corresponded in every way to the report, specifies the prosecutor's office of Lyon, which opened an investigation for intentional homicide.
One of these two people carried a bloodstained knife.
A knife with a broken blade, the missing part of which was found in the victim's body.
Uncertainty about the identity of the suspects and the victim
To conduct its investigations, the departmental security relies mainly on the account of the two witnesses of the murder as well as on the images of the video surveillance of the metro, under analysis since Sunday.
Because for the rest, the investigation is presented in a complex way.
Impossible for the moment to determine the identity, or even the nationality of the two arrested.
"They have no paper, decline multiple identities", summarizes an investigator.
Same uncertainty around the victim.
"He would be twenty years old and of foreign nationality", specifies for his part the prosecution.
Departmental security investigators are also trying to shed light on the circumstances of the tragedy.
Were the young people related?
Or is their meeting on Saturday evening in Gerland the result of chance?
Here again, it is a blur.
“They were so drunk that they don't remember what happened,” said a source close to the investigation.
The mayor will soon meet Gérald Darmanin
In any case, this deadly aggression raises the debate on insecurity a notch.
For Etienne Blanc, member (LR) of the municipal opposition, "we are still going to say that there is no security problem in Lyon, and that there is no shortage of police personnel".
The elected RNs are ironic about "the feeling of insecurity".
Meanwhile, a LyonCoupeGorge hashtag is thriving on social networks, attacking both the positions of Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti as well as elected environmentalists.
The new ecological mayor of Lyon, Grégory Doucet, regularly questioned on security issues by associations of angry residents, took up the case.
The previous weekend, he had written to the Ministry of the Interior to alert it to the steady decline in the national police force since 2018 and to demand the assignment of 200 new national police officers.
The mayor of Lyon is due to meet Minister Gérald Darmanin in the coming days.
The Lyon public transport unions urgently call for training in conflict and violence management.
