Toulouse: from the Mirail deal to the murder of a comrade, the terrifying itinerary of a teenage killer
La Dépêche du Midi retraces the tragic journey of a 15-year-old teenager from Toulouse, indicted for the assassination of his former best friend. Raised in a climate of ultra-violence, A. never stopped sinking into delinquency to the point of constituting the irreparable.
A. will be 16 this fall. This kid from the cities of Toulouse is imprisoned in the juvenile district of the Villeneuve-lès-Maguelone remand center near Montpellier. On May 22, accompanied by an accomplice, barely older than him, he allegedly killed 18-year-old Lucas with a knife in the chest, against a backdrop of romantic rivalry. Before being scrambled, these two boys had met at CDEF 31 (departmental center for childhood and the family), where they had established an almost fusional friendship.
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educator in this structure, saw the duo evaluated: “Quickly, they became very close. They develop the 400 blows together sometimes for the worse. One evening, Lucas arrived in tears at the villa. He was convinced that his boyfriend had was kidnapped by crooks. We immediately called the police station. In fact, it was a hoax, A. had invented everything but this episode showed how much Lucas understood him.”
“He’s a kid with his weaknesses, sensitive but also talkative”
At only 15 years old, A. had already turned to delinquency. He officiated as “chouf” (lookout) at Izards and Mirail. “The money was flowing. He was carrying pairs of baskets at three hundred euros. It was going to his head, maintaining his feeling of omnipotence. But he is also a kid who has weaknesses, sensitive but also voluble , able to express his discomfort”, says the educator.
A. had a disastrous childhood. His father, a feisty character with a complicated past, regularly beat him up hoping to keep him on the right track. A. harbored a fierce hatred against his father. This translated into a refusal of any form of authority. In his follow-up sheet, his educators note that “A. is a young man in pain who suffered violence and humiliation in his childhood.” His psychologist writes in the same report that “A.’s bond with his father remains dangerous and destructuring.”
The fable of the file S
Seduced by both the organized crime magnified in films and series, and the terror that spawned radical Islam, A. invents a character for himself. He tells his friends that he has his way with local bosses and that he is on S. For Fred, it was a way for him to impose himself and scare: “When he committed a misdemeanor , he could shout Allah Akbar. He advised his friends to do the same, just to impress the adults, but behind that there was no ideology.”
A. already an adult physique, slender but athletic. At CDEF, he trains regularly with Lucas in MMA, a discipline that combines different martial arts and combat sports such as boxing. Out of school since December 2021 – he would have hit a supervisor in college – he is regularly subject to bloodshed.
“As soon as he felt an emotional charge that was too strong, he tended to attack others. On his way back to CDEF, he happened to hit people in the street for free just to pass his nerves. A day, he came back with his hands bleeding. He claimed to have assaulted an adult. He was worried. He looked on social networks and on news sites if we were not talking about a fight that had gone wrong, ” assures Fred.
Assault on a night watchman
The management of the CDEF is concerned about its influence on the other children. In his file, we can read that he “trains young people in the neighborhood to deal”. He regularly runs away from the establishment and is, on several occasions, placed in police custody in the context of narcotics cases. In the eyes of justice, he remains a small dealer placed under judicial supervision for drug trafficking cases. He is not yet known for acts of violence when, with four comrades, he beats up a CDEF night watchman.
It was May 11. It took the intervention of the police to restore calm. The teenager who was going to assume the irreparable had been “exfiltrated” from the reception structure and housed in an isolated apartment. The assaulted officer had only filed a complaint on May 18, four days before A. Don’t mar Lucas.
A. was it monitored and hosted in the right structure?
DDM – NATHALIE SAINT-AFFRE
The shock wave is terrible and still shakes the CDEF 31 (Departmental Center for Children and the Family). After the murder of Lucas, management activated a crisis unit and provided employees with psychological support. Guided by the desire to protect its young residents, the management of the establishment refuses to comment on the tragedy but its employees speak. They accuse their executives of having shown too much laxity against A. and four other teenagers who had beaten up a night watchman 11 days before the homicide. Those who had worked directly with A. were perhaps not surprised by this fatal outcome.
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Chantal Girard, the director of the CDEF does not say anything else: “Our establishment is properly staffed even if we regularly have to deal with recruitment problems. The real difficulty is orientation. In 2021, 22% of stays lasted more than three months. Currently around twenty minors have been welcomed at the CDEF for more than a year. This situation confronts the CDEF with a paradoxical injunction: to be as reactive as possible on emergency reception while accompanying the minors over long periods of time.
The names have been changed
Georges Méric, the president of the Department steps up to the plate
A. was not known for acts of violence”, affirms the prosecutor Antoine Leroy
Antoine Leroy, deputy prosecutor, head of the child protection unit in Toulouse.
Antoine Leroy, deputy prosecutor, head of the child protection unit in Toulouse.
Despite his young age, A. had already been in the crosshairs of the courts for some time. “Before he was imprisoned, he was the subject of six procedures and sentenced three times,” reports Antoine Leroy, deputy prosecutor, head of the child protection department. A. was best known for having been involved in drug trafficking, he was indeed worried about a weapon but the case had been closed without further action. He had also committed an act of rebellion vis-à-vis a policeman, but nothing too bad.” For a teenager who commits thefts, there is no problem of placement. There are enough structures of adapted reception. Same thing, For a hyperviolent kid, we always find a place in a CEF (Closed education center) even if he leaves the department. It’s more complicated with profiles like that of A. who occurs between the low spectrum and the very high spectrum of delinquency. In these cases, placements are less simple to implement. If we had a few more places in CEF, we would use them, that’s obvious “, confides the representative of the public ministry. On April 8, 2022, after having committed several drug-related offences, the noose tightens around the kid from the housing estates. He was brought before the public prosecutor and placed under judicial control while remaining at CDEF 31 where he had been living for several months. At this stage, for the judges, his dangerousness does not require placement in CEF. “He was not known to have committed acts of violence. Going to the stage of deprivation of liberty was premature”, indicates Antoine Leroy. The magistrate ensures that a placement in CEF would undoubtedly not have stopped the murder of Lucas. “Be careful, these structures are not prisons. There are runaways every day. This would not have prevented the facts from being committed.”