First riots victim remembered
2005-11-07 22:15
Paris - About 200 people held a silent tribute on Monday to the first victim linked to the urban violence ripping through France, a 61-year-old man who died in hospital after being assaulted last week.
Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec was knocked into a coma last Friday by a young man wearing a hood as he was talking about the riots with a neighbour in a public housing estate in the northern Paris suburb of Stains.
His widow, Nicole, speaking after meeting interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy, said of the aggressor: "I want these people punished."
The interior minister, "whom I support with all my heart, has promised to do everything in his power to help us", she added.
A crowd of mourners gathered in Le Chenadec's home town on Monday evening to pay him a tribute, observing a minute of silence and laying a wreath of flowers at the site of the assault.
Concerned that his death could further inflame the situation, the mayor of Stains, Michel Beaumale, sought to play down any link to the current rioting.
"This is a criminal act that nothing can justify, but it would be dangerous to draw a link between the current urban violence and this murder," he said.
The attack, he said, was rather "an illustration of the trouble that adults, and young people who know no language other than violence, have in living together".
According to police, Le Chenadec and his neighbour Jean-Pierre Moreau, 58, had been discussing the riots at the time of the attack.
Moreau, who was also assaulted and was recovering from his injuries on Monday, said the attacker had punched them both after they told him they were talking about their cars.
According to police, both men had been targeted by stone-throwing youths an hour earlier, after stepping in to stop rubbish bins from being vandalised.