Paris, Oct. 7, (dpa/GNA) – The southern French city of Marseille has been rocked by a violent confrontation between two drug gangs in which the alleged perpetrators and victims are getting younger and younger.
Public Prosecutor Nicolas Bessone on Monday spoke of “extraordinary, unprecedented violence” after a 15-year-old was stabbed and burned alive, while a 14-year-old alleged hit man is accused of shooting a cab driver in the head simply because he refused to stop.
Investigators believe an ongoing fight between the “DZ Mafia” and the “Clan des Blacks” over a lucrative drug sales point in the city as the trigger for the latest wave of violence, according to a report by the newspaper Le Parisien.
The 15-year-old had been instructed by a 23-year-old imprisoned for drug dealing to intimidate the other side by shooting at a door, which he was then to set on fire. He reportedly was told he would be paid €2,000 ($2,200).
But the job went wrong, according to Bessone. A gang member from the other side searched the 15-year-old, found a firearm and stabbed him 50 times before setting him on fire while he was still alive.
In revenge for the brutal act, the imprisoned gang member who set the plot in motion is then said to have hired a 14-year-old as a hit man for €50,000.
That plot, however, also failed, according to the prosecutor. He alleged that the 14-year-old thought he recognized his potential victim on the road as he was driving to his destination at night in a cab.
The boy asked the driver to stop and wait, telling the driver that he had something to do. When the cab driver, a 37-year-old father, drove on instead, the 14-year-old allegedly shot him in the back of the head. GNA