Awakened with a start in the middle of the night, Sylvie initially believed "in a clap of thunder".
But after getting closer to her window, she realized that it was not lightning but a ram car attack on her bar-tobacco, located below the apartment she occupies with her husband, Gaétan, in Bury.
"We watched them make, no choice," sighs the latter.
"If we had come down, what would they have done?"
Asks the owner of the Town Hall Café.
And to assume: “We could have been abused or taken hostage.
"
In the night from Sunday to Monday, it took only six minutes for the four criminals to flee with the fund of a few hundred euros and about fifty cartons of cigarettes.
“First water hammer at 4:12 am.
At 4:18 am, they had left, ”explains Gaétan.
“As if it was timed, continues his wife.
There was one that said
go, go, go,
so the others would hurry, I think.
"
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Oise: two car-ramming attacks carried out in quick succession in the night
And as the boss ironically reminds us, “they put their heart into it”.
Large pieces of the stone wall behind the dented iron curtain still littered the ground this Monday morning.
“They tapped four times before they got to come home,” says Gaétan.
Once their arms were loaded with cigarettes, three hooded men joined a fourth who was waiting for them in another car before leaving, leaving the ram vehicle behind them.
An investigation was entrusted to the Méru research brigade, we learned from the Beauvais prosecutor's office.
According to our information, a similar breakage attempt took place that same night in a tobacco bar in Sacy-le-Grand, about twenty kilometers from Bury.
With the attacks during the night from Thursday to last Friday of an ATM in Nogent-sur-Oise and another tobacconist in Breuil-le-Vert, this brings the number of thefts or attempted thefts to four. ram car in less than five days, in a restricted area between Creil and Clermont.
Bury, Monday April 12, 2021. Large pieces of the stone wall located behind the dented iron curtain were found inside the store.
LP / Benjamin Derveaux
Each time, it would be four hooded men using two stolen vehicles to try to break into the storefronts.
In the night from Sunday to Monday, the vehicle which was used for the escape of the criminals after the breakage of Bury was found on the side of Montataire, near the D 200. A group of individuals was spotted near the black car , but he managed to escape before the police arrived.
"We can strongly assume that it is the same team," slips an investigator.
“Space-time does indeed pose a question,” raises another policeman.
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"It will be the object of the investigations to make it possible to make a possible link with the previous facts [...] which in the state is not acquired", specifies the prosecutor of the Republic of Beauvais, Caroline Tharot.
Still, several investigations are open, on the side of the gendarmerie research brigades or the judicial police of Creil concerning the facts of Nogent-sur-Oise, to try to find the perpetrators of these attacks.
"We are already working at a loss"
For the victims, these breakages represent a double penalty.
“We are already working at a loss,” Gaétan blows.
"And it is not next week that we will be able to reopen", engages his companion.
In front of their establishment, several customers came to show their solidarity.
"It's an intelligence ... As if life was not difficult enough at the moment", plague a local resident.
For his part, the president of the union of tobacconists of the Oise said he was "disgusted".
“It is always the same people who suffer this type of attack.
This is the umpteenth time that this has happened and nothing happens, annoys Serdar Kaya.
It is the lives of people that we touch.
The person in charge is worried about the difficult context, affirming that he now happens to receive “phone calls from managers who are thinking about suicide”.
"The longer the thieves stay, the more they leave traces"
“We must act so that local shops in rural areas are better protected,” concludes Serdar Kaya.
According to Colonel Tugdual Vieillard-Baron, commander of the Oise gendarmerie group, however, this is a "cyclical phenomenon", which depends on "the formation of new teams".
And the officer reminded that there are SMS alert systems or "security correspondents" within the gendarmerie to help these traders to strengthen the security of their establishment.
“There are some simple things that can be done to make it harder for criminals.
We must at least be able to slow them down, believes the colonel.
The longer the thieves stay, the more they leave traces.
"