{"id":118410,"date":"2026-05-15T16:26:54","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T16:26:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=118410"},"modified":"2026-05-15T16:26:54","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T16:26:54","slug":"boy-15-shot-dead-in-france-as-prosecutors-blame-drug-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=118410","title":{"rendered":"Boy, 15, shot dead in France as prosecutors blame drug war"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>2 Minute, 40 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>
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French prosecutors say a 15-year-old boy has been killed and a boy of 13 seriously injured in a suspected drugs-related shooting in the western city of Nantes.<\/p>\n

The attackers were wearing balaclavas and used automatic weapons, according to the country\u2019s Interior Minister Laurent Nu\u00f1ez.<\/p>\n

The 13-year-old and a third boy who was also wounded are now out of danger, Nu\u00f1ez added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe shots were fired at three young men,\u201d said Nantes prosecutor Antoine Leroy, who believed the attack was a settling of scores in relation to drug offences.<\/p>\n

But Nu\u00f1ez suggested that the victims could have been innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe motives behind this shooting, as the public prosecutor has stated, are very likely linked to drug trafficking,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat said\u2026 that does not mean that the individuals who were targeted, and especially the person who died, were themselves involved in trafficking. I want to be absolutely clear on that\u201d.<\/p>\n

The 15-year-old boy\u2019s aunt, named as Paola, from Nantes\u2019 working-class neighbourhood of Port-Boyer, strongly rejected the possibility that he was involved with drugs.<\/p>\n

She told reporters her nephew \u201cwas not a criminal\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Boy,<\/figure>\n

\u201cYou shouldn\u2019t mix everything up,\u201d said Paola. \u201cHe was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He wasn\u2019t involved in any of that; he had simply come to visit a friend.\u201d<\/p>\n

As people gathered around the police cordon, the mother of one of the victims could be heard crying in despair from her car. It\u2019s an area where high-rise apartment blocks sit along the banks of the Erdre river.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe boys were on their way to their grandmother\u2019s house,\u201d explains Stella, 35. \u201cI was home when it happened. A police officer called me to bring my son back and tell me my nephew was injured\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I\u2019m in a nightmare and I\u2019m angry because I almost lost my son.\u201d<\/p>\n

Angeline, 18, described hearing two bursts of around 10 gunshots, before seeing several people \u201chooded and dressed in black\u201d running through the grass.<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s Mayor, Johanna Rolland, has condemned what she calls the \u201cdrug trafficking that is plaguing the country\u201d, and emphasised the distress and intense emotion\u201d this community was already going through after another fatal shooting at the end of last month.<\/p>\n

On that occasion, a man was killed and another seriously wounded in the same area in a shooting also linked to drug trafficking. The gunman used a pistol before escaping.<\/p>\n

Rolland called for all police resources to be deployed to find the attackers this time around.<\/p>\n

Nu\u00f1ez said the government would carry on the war against traffickers and \u201ccontinue to win battles\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe owe that to the victims, and we owe it to the residents of these neighbourhoods who are at the end of their tether, and\u2026 can no longer bear this drug trafficking,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

In 2025, several French cities brought in night-time curfews against young people to try to combat drug-related violence.<\/p>\n

France\u2019s Ministry of Justice estimates that the number of teenagers involved in the illegal trade has risen more than four-fold in the past eight years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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French prosecutors say a 15-year-old boy has been killed and a boy of 13 seriously injured in a suspected drugs-related shooting in the western city of Nantes.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_2277560469115098_106292521332774":"","twitter_aToxNzczMzI3Njk4OTg4ODUxMjAxOw==_1773327698988851200":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2082,1910,10,9,17906],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-france","category-international","category-politics","category-popular","category-prosecutors"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=118410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=118410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=118410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=118410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}