PARIS The boy who allegedly inflicted the fatal stab wound on Thomas, 16, the high school student killed a week ago at the end of a village festival, is twenty-year-old Chaïd Akabli, a convicted felon living in a small hotel Toulouse was arrested in Paris while he was trying to escape to Spain.
The Crépol massacre and the identity of the alleged murderer are causing great excitement in France, with the far right denouncing “the arrival of banlieue criminals in our country.” According to the prosecutor of Valence, Laurent de Caigny, the boy arrested along with eight other companions is of French nationality and was born and lives in Romans-sur-Isère, a town of around thirty thousand inhabitants, about twenty minutes from the small village Crepol.
Chaïd Akabli denies the allegations but is now being “formally investigated as a possible perpetrator of the stabbing,” Valence prosecutor Laurent de Caigny said on Friday, the same day the 16-year-old’s funeral took place. The alleged murderer, without a permanent job, lives with his mother of Maghreb origin in an apartment in Romans-sur-Isère and hangs out with his gang of around thirty people in the Monnaie district, where, according to various witness statements, he does odd jobs for drug dealers.
The boy was already known to the police for petty crime. In the past he was fined 250 euros for receiving stolen property and 200 euros for being caught with a knife on the street.
At the end of the “Winter Ball”, around two in the morning between Saturday and Sunday, Chaïd’s gang raided the Crépol ballroom, indiscriminately attacking anyone who came within reach with knives and butchers’ axes. Twenty stabbed, two very seriously, and one dead: Thomas, 16, a high school student, was hit in the chest and neck and died in the ambulance racing toward the hospital.
“We’re here to stab white people,” one of the attackers shouted, according to witnesses. Those arrested deny this and instead speak of a reaction to a provocation. One of Thomas’ friends allegedly approached Chaïd’s group, pulled him by his hair and called him Chiquita (little girl), in reference to the song Tchikita by the rapper Jul. According to the defendant, this would have led to a violent reaction from the defendant. Thomas and his murderer did not know each other; he would have been shot at random.
In these hours, Thomas’ death and the identity of his alleged stabber have become a political fact, not just a news story. At first, the Crépol massacre was portrayed by the authorities as a fight between youth gangs, then a different truth emerged: there were attackers and those attacked, violent boys who came with knives and victims who were attacked at the end of a village festival. in a rural village with less than 600 inhabitants. Marine Le Pen says that “the French no longer feel safe anywhere,” while Eric Zemmour now speaks of “Franocide” to describe the murder of someone because of their Frenchness and whiteness. Right-wing commentators denounce the silence and the general climate of underestimation of these crimes, with the aim of not increasing tensions. It took days for the events in Crépol to be understood and reported in their severity. Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti accuses the Rassemblement National and the far right in general of “political exploitation”.