The city of Saint-Denis extended on Monday for 48 hours the ban on gatherings in public spaces, taken Thursday after the deaths of two teenagers aged 14 and 18, following two separate attacks on Wednesday, in a context inter-district tensions.
“It is a measure which for the moment has proven itself,” declared Monday morning Mathieu Hanotin, PS mayor of the popular city of 113,000 inhabitants, in Seine-Saint-Denis.
Also read “No revenge, no violence”: the call for calm from the relatives of Sedan, 14, killed with a knife
Since Thursday, the police have carried out "around twenty arrests of people who were clearly ill-intentioned since they were in possession of various blunt objects", reported the councilor.
“All groupings and gatherings of people leading to abusive, prolonged occupations of the public domain, undermining order and security, are prohibited” throughout the municipality, according to a municipal decree.
If minors are not specifically mentioned in the decree, the objective is to avoid a “return match”, in the event that the hypothesis of inter-district brawls is confirmed.
A “fleeting, cold” aggression
Around 7:45 p.m. on Wednesday, Sedan, a 14-year-old school student in Saint-Denis, was stabbed to death on the metro platform (line 13) in the heart of the city.
As of Sunday evening, a 19-year-old young man who went to the Seine-Saint-Denis judicial police, responsible for the investigation, was indicted for intentional homicide of a 15-year-old minor and placed in pre-trial detention. .
A few hours before the murder of Sedan, an 18-year-old high school student, Farid A., had been violently attacked with baseball bats, according to a police source, in front of his school.
He died of these injuries on Saturday.
VIDEO.
“There are no words…”: in Saint-Denis, the tribute to Sedan, 14 years old, stabbed to death
The “attack was fleeting, cold, indiscriminate and extremely violent with the use of blunt objects.
The attackers left their victim on the ground,” described the municipality in a press release.
Particular attention was paid to securing educational establishments within the framework of the municipal decree prohibiting gatherings.
“We are doing our utmost so that there is no doubt about the fact that we can send our child safely to middle and high school,” Mathieu Hanotin insisted Monday morning, after going to the Bartholdi high school, where Farid attended school.
“A specific system has been put in place by National Education for the mobilization of security teams” as well as psychological support, added the mayor of the city, wishing “a return to the framework of the school whose children need.
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