Two men died by gunfire on Sunday evening in Sevran, in Seine-Saint-Denis, two days after another deadly shooting. The two cases appear to be linked to drug trafficking according to the police headquarters.
New shooting in Sevran. Two men aged 31 and 35 were shot and killed this Sunday, May 5, around 6:30 p.m., in the Cité Basse located in the town of Seine-Saint-Denis. A man opened fire with a handgun from a car before fleeing, according to information from Actu17. Around twenty 9mm caliber cartridge cases as well as a magazine were reportedly found at the crime scene. The two victims died on the spot despite the intervention of emergency services. They were both known for drug trafficking, said the prefect of police, Laurent Nunez, who went to the Sevran police station on Sunday evening. “We have good reason to believe that this evening’s events are not completely unrelated to drug trafficking,” he added.
These murders occurred only two days after a previous shooting which left one dead and six injured Friday evening, still in Sevran, in the Beaudottes district. Here again, individuals opened fire from a car and fired in bursts with a Kalashnikov-type weapon. For the moment, no link has been established between the two shootings according to Laurent Nunez. An investigation was opened and entrusted to the criminal brigade of the Paris judicial police.
If the two shootings that occurred in Sevran over the weekend are not yet officially linked according to investigators, an official told Le Parisien that Sunday’s murders are “very probably the rematch of what happened on Friday. From what I know, it would be an execution, a bullet to the head.” The hypothesis remains to be confirmed.
But what is certain for the police headquarters is that these shootings are responses by traffickers to Place Net XXL operations which disrupt drug trafficking. “The trading point in the Rougemont city in Sevran has been eradicated. The judicial investigations carried out have made it possible to arrest numerous traffickers, dismantle networks and seize several dozen kilograms of cannabis. It is obvious that these operations are destabilizing the trafficking and spark turf wars to reclaim dismantled deal points,” she explained in a press release.
The various left-wing mayor of Sevran, Stéphane Blanchet, also points to drug trafficking as the main cause of this “unbelievable outburst of violence” which “does not happen by chance”. “It is trafficking, the dirty money of the drug economy which is responsible. This parallel economy is organized with its small bosses, its small hands, its employees and its structures for laundering dirty money , tainted with blood and death” he regretted in a press release.
An observation which calls for a response from the State according to the mayor. “We need to do even more. We need to hit, hit very hard” insisted Stéphane Blanchet on franceinfo this Monday, May 6: “We need action. We also need the high authorities of the State to express themselves with action. It’s not the Wild West, it’s a city that needs the State to provide the means.” Sunday evening, the police prefect assured the continuation of police efforts “both in terms of judicial investigations under the authority of magistrates and in terms of security” while the mayor of Sevran fears that it will start again.