In Chemin Bas d’Avignon, a priority district of the city of Nîmes (Gard), the streets are almost deserted this Thursday, February 22, in the middle of the afternoon. Here, however, the schoolchildren are on vacation, but only a few families flock to the sidewalks and the playgrounds are empty and the café terraces are deserted. The neighborhood seems to be at a standstill.

Tuesday, February 20th, early evening, A 39-year-old man, known to police, was shot dead in front of his 8-year-old son who was in the car and who, miraculously, wasn’t hit. This new drama occurred in an already very difficult context. Ten days earlier, at the end of class and just as a school bus arrived, there had been a double shooting involving masked men. The schoolchildren had to be locked up at school and put on the bus before they were allowed to leave the premises under heavy police protection.

After Tuesday’s death, neither mayor Jean-Paul Fournier (Les Républicains) nor prefect Jérôme Bonet, who arrived in the Gard six months ago, have reacted. “There is not much to say”let us trust the prefect’s entourage, who, however, had communicated around the last operation “Place Net” carried out in Nîmes to combat drug trafficking and crime, which was carried out in this district on the night of Tuesday to February 13 until Wednesday, February 14, and resulted in the arrest of four people, including one in an irregular situation.

“It could burst at any moment”

For years, the 7,200 residents of this city have been living in constant stress due to drug trafficking. In the same neighborhood, in June 2020, the death of Anis, a 21-year-old young man killed by a stray bullet on a Sunday evening, traumatized the population. Here, too, the following year, the Georges Bruguier School, surrounded by the drug trade and whose facade had been riddled with bullets a few years earlier, went through hell for months until it saw two hooded drug dealers arrive in the courtyard Children.

Everyday life has become “use”, explains Roselyne Ben Ali, president of the Chemin Bas d’Avignon football club and a resident of the area. “It could erupt at any time, at any time of the day. We no longer know when to go out, which sidewalk to walk on because it is difficult during the day and at night. Everyone is lost, the parents are worried, the children no longer dare to go out, and that is destroying the business. On the day of the shooting, I went to the doctor and was on the street half an hour early. We tell ourselves that our lives no longer mean anything. »

You still have 52.43% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.