Marseille’s long-running drug turf wars are under a renewed spotlight after a 14-year-old boy was allegedly hired as a hitman via social media and promised €50,000 (£42,000) by a prisoner to carry out a revenge killing, reports The Guardian.
The teenager is alleged to have been recruited by the 23-year-old inmate who later called the police from his prison cell to report the boy after he allegedly shot dead a 36-year-old man.
An investigation has been opened into alleged murder and conspiracy to murder by a criminal gang. Police are trying to determine why the prisoner reported his own alleged recruit to police.
The Marseille prosecutor, Nicolas Bessone, described the latest incident as “unprecedented savagery” in a press conference on Sunday, saying two recent crimes involving teenagers showed that drug turf wars were dragging in the “ultra-young”, who were being enlisted by gangs to carry out increasingly violent crimes. He said there was a “complete loss of bearings” with teenagers involved in crimes.
On Friday, a 36-year-old taxi driver from the firm Bolt, who was well-known in Marseille as an amateur footballer, was found shot dead by a bullet to the head in his car not far from the city’s main train station. He was described by the prosecutor as having nothing to do with the drugs trade in the Mediterranean port city and although he was “coldly shot” in the back of the head, he was not believed to have been the intended target.
Bessone said: “[The prisoner] recruited a 14-year-old minor from Vaucluse and organised the logistics for him to be collected by car and brought to a hotel room in Marseille. The young boy was carrying his own 357 Magnum revolver”.
The boy allegedly had been instructed to carry out a shooting and was told to travel by car. He asked the driver to wait, and when he refused the boy shot him in the back of the head, authorities said.