A young man, dressed in black tracksuit bottoms and a red Lacoste t-shirt, appeared frozen in terror on a camping chair, arms outstretched, head thrown back. The close-up video was recorded moments after a burst of gunfire at 1:10 pm on April 7 and shared on social media platform Snapchat.
The scene played out on Promenade Lénine, in the Mas du Taureau neighborhood of the Lyon suburb Vaulx-en-Velin, an area notorious for its dilapidated housing and heavy drug trafficking. A horizontal caption ran across the video, as allowed by the ephemeral video-sharing app. The person filming wrote, “The Madness.” The seven-second clip was circulating online even before emergency services and the police had arrived. At the end of the video, the wail of an approaching ambulance can be heard in the background.
The first paramedic on scene found the same sight in real life: the young man, motionless on his folding camping chair, a crowd gathered around. She lifted his blood-soaked hood and saw his face, disfigured by three red holes. Neighbors hung sheets, both out of respect for the victim and to shield children from the horror. The Angelina-Courcelles elementary school is less than 100 meters away. The school principal called emergency services after hearing gunshots. In the recorded call, he explained to police that something serious had just happened, while giving instructions at the school gate: “Come on, bring the children inside, quickly!”
According to forensic doctors, the young man was killed by three bullets to the head from a 9mm Luger. The victim was quickly identified: Abdel Hakim B., age 19, born in Gleizé, north of Lyon. Known to police for drug use, the student was supposed to pass his higher technical diploma in computer science that June. After finishing high school and attending a technical school, he was waiting for an apprenticeship contract to start his professional life.
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