• On Saturday evening, five people were wounded, three seriously, by automatic weapon fire in Villerupt, Meurthe-et-Moselle.
  • The suspect in the shooting and an accomplice who was driving the vehicle managed to flee towards Luxembourg.
  • According to the mayor of the commune, it could be a settling of scores against a background of drug trafficking.

Saturday night, in Villerupt, Meurthe-et-Moselle, five people were injured by automatic weapon fire. Three of them have a life-threatening prognosis. An individual, suspected of being the author of the shooting, was identified by the investigators of the judicial police. We take stock of the elements that we know.

Swift and targeted action

It was around 19 p.m. that the attack took place in Villerupt, a town of 10,000 inhabitants located in Meurthe-et-Moselle, a few kilometers from the Luxembourg border.

A car stopped at Place Carnot according to our colleagues from the Republican Lorrain. A man, passenger of the vehicle, got out, hooded and carrying a "long-barreled rifle emitting burst fire," confirmed the prosecutor of the Republic of Val-de-Briey, Catherine Galen, to AFP. He fired several shots at a group of people. "Many shell casings were found," said the prosecutor, between 15 and 20 cases report our colleagues. The gunman then got back into the car driven by an accomplice before fleeing.

"There are five victims, four men and one woman. Three people are seriously affected, with two vital prognoses engaged. Among the injured, there is a minor, and the oldest is a thirty-year-old, "says the prosecutor. The local press mentions a 16-year-old injured for the minor and a passer-by, wounded in the arm, who did not belong to the group obviously targeted.

Suspects on the run

The prosecutor's office says there is "an identified shooter," who has not yet been arrested. According to our colleagues from the Luxembourg media Virgule, the suspect and his accomplice fled to Luxembourg. Local elected officials have also evoked another shooting, in a commune near the site of the attack: "There was only one scene of shooting, there is nothing in Audun-le-Tiche," said the prosecutor.

The investigation of flagrance was entrusted to the DTPJ of Metz (territorial direction of the judicial police, formerly DRPJ). Seized initially, the prosecutor's office of Val-de-Briey, not competent for this type of facts, should relinquish jurisdiction of the investigation in favor of the prosecutor's office of Nancy.

Settling accounts?

The shooting took place at the foot of a six-storey building, a place "known to be a point of deal," said the mayor of Villerupt, Pierre Spizak, adding that it could suggest "a settling of scores". However, the elected official tempered his words: "I am not saying that the wounded are traffickers, it may have just been friends who were talking. "

If the prosecutor's office has not confirmed a link between the facts and drug trafficking, the mayor of Villerupt has driven the nail, telling our colleagues that he felt that "violence was crescendo on this point of drugs known for several years". The elected official feels "helpless" and "abandoned" by the State while he has been alerting the authorities for "some time" about the situation of his municipality. If he is pleased to have obtained the maintenance of the police station of his city, he deplores the lack of police personnel: "We currently have between 11,000 and 12,000 complaints that are not processed, for lack of means," he said.

  • Miscellaneous facts Strasbourg
  • Miscellaneous facts
  • Meurthe-et-Moselle
  • Grand East
  • Lorraine
  • Shooting
  • Drug trafficking
  • Account settlement