PARIS. A wave of violence among very young people. Settling scores between neighborhood gangs, teenagers unleashed to avenge a friend betrayed by the girl or to “punish” an “unbeliever” who does not wear the Islamic headscarf: taking to the streets in groups with clubs and knives, against isolated and often exasperated victims from a preventive fake campaign on social media, they are minors, in some cases they are even 13 years old. After the death today of Shamseddine, beaten bloody as soon as he left school, Emmanuel Macron also took the field: “We will be inflexible, we will protect the school from this unbridled violence”, promised the president. In the evening, a seventeen-year-old was arrested for the murder.
The campaign for the European elections on 9 June is moving in recent days towards the increasingly uncontrollable violence in schools. After the beating of Samara, 13, on Tuesday in Montpellier, Macron – struggling in the polls – today visited an elementary school for autistic children in Paris. And while he was there the tragedy occurred, the death of Shamseddine, 15 years old, savagely killed by 4 or 5 people, probably of his age, who were waiting for him after the music lesson. He came out, they surrounded him and the violence broke out. It happened in Viry-Châtillon, in the suburbs of the capital. The boy survived until mid-day, after surviving the night but then succumbed to the severity of his injuries. The mayor, Jean-Marie Vilain, appeared in tears in front of the cameras: “It’s a tragedy, I’m thinking of the mother… we all need to relearn how to truly punish, to be strong and firm.” Words not dissimilar to those of Macron, who also had them for families: «School must remain a sanctuary for our children and teachers. We will be inflexible about what happens at school and around school – he said -. There are no bad habits that need to take hold. When there is a teacher threatened, we defend the teacher. There are no two doctrines in our Republic, authority passes through the teacher and families must accept it.” For both Shamseddine and Samara the investigations are in their early stages. But it seems that alongside the underlying reasons – ‘betrayed’ religion for Samara, who did not wear a veil and wore make-up, belonging to a rival group or gang for Shamseddine – the hypotheses of romantic intrigues are making their way. «Love dispute», «personal dispute» for Shamseddine, considered by all to be a quiet boy, who has never had anything to do with the police. In this case the investigations are taking their first steps and the interrogation of the seventeen-year-old arrested this evening is expected. In Montpellier, however, for the Samara case, three minors between 14 and 15 years old have already been arrested and confessed to having beaten the victim. The reason? The organizer of the ambush, an observant Muslim, detested Samara and apparently took as her pretext some unveiled photos of herself published on Snapchat by someone. She blamed Samara, and she would “take revenge.”
Having undergone surgery, the victim emerged from the coma induced by doctors to sedate her but is struggling with the consequences of a cerebral hemorrhage. Minors also went wild in Germany, where a thirteen-year-old killed a 31-year-old homeless man in Dortmund, apparently after an argument degenerated into insults and then into a fight. The boy – who appears to be a Bulgarian – took out a knife and attacked the homeless man, killing him on the docks of the city’s river port.