Teenager killed in Nantes: Nuñez promises to continue the war against drug trafficking

The Minister of the Interior, Laurent Nuez, confirmed on Friday the death of a 15-year-old teenager in Nantes, in a shooting “obviously linked to drug trafficking”, affirming his “determination” to “win” the “war” against drug trafficking.

“We are leading this war with determination and we will not give up. Yes, the fight is complicated but we will not lose this war,” insisted the minister from the scene of the shooting that occurred Thursday evening, where he arrived late in the morning.

According to Laurent Nuñez, the death toll from the tragedy in the popular district of Port-Boyer, north of Nantes, therefore amounts to one young person dead and two others seriously injured but whose lives are not in danger.

The two injured hospitalized, boys aged 13 and 14, are “now out of danger”, confirmed the prosecutor of the Republic of Nantes, Antoine Leroy.

A Samu psychological unit has been set up in the neighborhood, AFP noted.

Thursday, around 7:30 p.m., two “hooded” individuals arrived and opened fire “a little blindly” on a group of young teenagers, in this neighborhood bristling with blocks of buildings built in the middle of the greenery on the banks of a river, recalled the minister.

If the reasons for the shooting on this point of deal are “very probably linked” to drug trafficking, Laurent Nuñez insisted on the fact that nothing indicated that the teenagers targeted by the shootings “and a fortiori” the one who died were linked to trafficking.

This deal point is “highly coveted”, the police having arrested five people in March and “when we destabilize the territories, we create turf wars”, explained the minister, drawing a parallel with events that recently occurred in Nice and near Lyon.

On May 11 in Nice, in the middle of the afternoon, a man dropped off in a car with a scooter fired in bursts towards a group in front of a cafe and a candy store, killing two fathers aged 57 and 39. He also injured six people, three of them seriously.

The same day, in Décines-Charpieu, in the Lyon suburbs, an “intimidation” fire led to the death of three people, “who had nothing to do with drug trafficking”, recalled Mr. Nuñez.

– “Very afraid” –

“There are tragedies occurring”, but “we must continue to destabilize, to dismantle networks. What happened yesterday strengthens our determination to continue this incessant fight” against drug trafficking, he declared again, after having spoken with residents and the mayor of Nantes, Johanna Rolland.

Friday morning, three bullet holes are still visible in the front door of the building at 3 rue de Pornichet, where the shootings occurred.

A resident of the building described to AFP, on condition of anonymity, how she discovered one of the teenagers shot “who was no longer breathing”, saying she had thought about him “all night”.

A neighbor “is considering leaving the neighborhood where she grew up.” Her 10-year-old little boy said he was “very scared”. “It worries me, I’ve had enough of all this,” laments the boy who only wants to sleep next to his mother since the first gunshots heard in the neighborhood several weeks ago.

The traffic “settled in little by little”, Cécile, a sixty-year-old who has lived on rue de Pornichet “since 1995” and who said she was “deeply shocked”, testified to AFP.

“For a few years and especially a few months, we have clearly seen that it actually sucks and that really scares everyone,” she added, recently observing different people, “taller ones, hooded, all in black.”

The turnover of the drug market in France was estimated in 2023 at 6.8 billion euros, three times more than in 2010, according to the interministerial mission to combat drugs and addictive behavior (Mildeca).