War scene in the streets of Nîmes (Gard).
Gunshots rang out on Thursday February 8 in this town in the south of France, and more precisely in the sensitive district of Chemin-Bas-d'Avignon, near Pissevin, where a 10-year-old child lost his senses. life in a shooting last August,
Le Figaro
learned from the Nîmes prosecutor's office.
A blatant investigation was opened into the counts of
“violence with weapons and damage to private property by dangerous means by people in an organized gang”
, according to the public prosecutor Cécile Gensac.
At 3:45 p.m. Thursday, in the direct vicinity of four schools and a college, several people opened fire before fleeing in a 4x4, reported stolen.
If the first statements from the prosecution do not yet specify the type of caliber used, witnesses tell local media that these were
“weapons of war”
shots .
Around fifteen shell casings were found at the scene.
Confined nursery and “collateral victims”
The shooting caused the immediate confinement, and for nearly an hour, of a school and a daycare.
“We were in class, we heard noises that we had difficulty identifying with the students.
But pretty quickly, I realized that they were the sounds of automatic weapons.
It lasted about twenty seconds, it happened very quickly
,” a history-geography professor told our colleagues from France Bleu Gard Lozère.
The shooting took place near several schools, in the Chemin-Bas-d'Avignon district.
Google Maps screenshot
For its part, the prosecution mentioned
“several collateral victims”
.
However, no injuries were reported.
According to our information, a bullet was lodged in the headrest of a car, driven during the shooting by a mother, accompanied by her three children.
The French window of an apartment, occupied at the time of the incident, was hit by a shot.
Finally, a vehicle parked nearby also received at least one bullet impact.
"Rotating plate"
According to our colleagues at Actu, the stolen car used by the shooters was found a few hours after the incident, with a Kalashnikov-type assault rifle on board.
However, the shooters are still on the run this Friday evening, we learned.
The Chemin-Bas-d'Avignon sector, considered a
"hub of
drug trafficking
"
, according to a field police officer contacted by
Le Figaro
, regularly experiences episodes of violence.
A punitive expedition would have taken place on the night of Monday February 5 to Tuesday February 6, in a neighborhood bar, with the attack of a 28-year-old man by three men armed with knives.
Still according to the local press, the Anti-Crime Brigade (BAC) arrested the occupant of a fleeing car in the area on Saturday February 3, after a chase.
On board the vehicle was a loaded Kalashnikov.