Automatic weapon shooting in broad daylight: two people killed in Besançon, the shooter fled

Rue de l'Épitaphe à Besançon, où a eu lieu la fusillade. Google street view

Ce dimanche 25 août 2024, deux personnes ont été tuées par balles dans le quartier de Montrapon à Besançon (Franche-Comté). L'auteur des tirs a pris la fuite.

Two men were shot dead on Sunday near the Besançon university campus, where the judicial police and the scientific police were making observations, we learned from a police source.

"Shortly after 3 p.m., several calls to 17 reported the presence of a helmeted individual, dressed all in black, riding a two-wheeled vehicle, who was firing an automatic weapon at two people, a 49-year-old man and a 30-year-old man, who died", the interdepartmental director of the Doubs national police, Yves Cellier, told AFP, confirming information from l'Republican East.

“The individual fled. It is still too early to say what caused this disastrous event”, he added. The organized and specialized crime division of the interdepartmental service of Besançon was seized of the investigation by the judicial authority.

A first body , on the sidewalk of a small alley leading to a building, was covered with a sheet, an AFP journalist noted. The second body was about thirty meters away below, in the middle of a tree-filled square. The police are prohibiting access to a large area on site.

Drug trafficking

“It is a neighborhood where there are relatively frequent episodes of neighborhood complaints”, and which presents “points of “deal”, said Benoit Cipriani, deputy mayor of Besançon. “There is activity related to drug trafficking. All it takes is for someone to #39;a kind of prison sometimes to complicate things”.