Le Figaro Nantes
According to the victims, it was just a very ordinary night trip - almost tourism. Two men were admitted on the night of Saturday 13 to Sunday 14 January at Nantes University Hospital, for slight but numerous stab wounds. A settling of scores? Not quite. According to their testimony, the two individuals were unlucky when they lost their way in a car on rue Samuel de Champlain, in the northern district of Nantes, around 3 a.m. And asking the wrong person for directions.
The two individuals, aged 41 and 37, were stabbed seven and five times, respectively, to the arms, legs and thighs, during the altercation with a third, unidentified man. The lives of the two victims are not in danger. The two men were unable to explain the possible motives of their attacker and did not wish to press charges.
The shadow of drug trafficking
The Departmental Directorate of Public Security remains dubious, to say the least, in the face of the "bizarre" account of the two victims' nocturnal peregrination, in the middle of a sensitive neighborhood. According to a police source, it is in all likelihood a case linked to drug trafficking circles, "a meeting where the transaction must have gone wrong". The older of the two is unfavourably known to law enforcement for drug trafficking cases.
One of the key areas of drug trafficking in Nantes, the northern districts were the subject of a joint visit in October by the public prosecutor, Renaud Gaudeul, and the prefect of Loire-Atlantique, Fabrice Rigoulet-Roze. The two men had accompanied, amid some boos and insults, a security operation carried out by about forty police officers. However, this show of force did not solve the problem of trafficking in the northern districts in the long term.