Colmar: What do we know about the murder of the young Afghan on the sidelines of an urban rodeo? – 20 minutes

Sunday, a young Afghan was killed in a city of Colmar, in Alsace. Wounded by bullets, Quayyeem Ahmadzai died a few hours later in hospital. The victim would have come into conflict with individuals doing urban rodeo in the neighborhood. The perpetrators of the shots are still at large and wanted by the police. 20 Minutes takes stock of this tragic affair. What happened this Sunday in Colmar? This Sunday afternoon, a group of Afghans organized a barbecue in this city in the Europe district, in Colmar. They would then have been disturbed by a scooter in the middle of an urban rodeo. They “were bothered by the regular passage of a scooter on the sidewalk” and one of them then asked “the driver to move away to stop the noise”, detailed the public prosecutor of Colmar, Catherine Sorita-Minard. Two individuals were using the scooter. “He told them that it was forbidden to circulate here on scooters. The guys started to insult him and they fought”, specified the cousin of the victim interviewed by RTL. The driver “insulted him and promised him that he was going to come back with reinforcement”, continued the prosecutor. The authors of the urban rodeo leave before returning “a little later (…) with several individuals”. A brawl would then have broken out between the two groups and “while some of the protagonists dispersed, a shot was fired by an individual, according to the witnesses heard within the framework of the investigation, in the direction of the victim”, further specified the magistrate. The perpetrators of the shooting would then “leave quietly”, assured the cousin of the victim, who, injured in the chest, died of his injuries on the night of Sunday to Monday at 3:40 a.m. “I have never seen that”, testified this Wednesday Djabri, Colmarien “for forty-six years” and resident of the Europe district “for sixteen years”. To AFP, this 66-year-old retiree said he heard several explosions, “two or three. I thought they were young people having fun with firecrackers”. “And then I saw a young man who was running, who had gone crazy”, obviously the alleged shooter, “I think he was sorry (…) Two friends of his were following him and then they started running” to take the leak, he added. Who is the victim? Quayyeem Ahmadzai was 27 years old. The young man who called himself Abdul was born in Afghanistan and had fled his country because of the war, assured his cousin. He was domiciled in Mulhouse and was unknown to the police. According to LCI, Quayyeem Ahmadzai left the city five months ago to live in Colmar and move closer to the Stellantis vehicle assembly plant in Mulhouse (Haut-Rhin) where he was employed as a temporary worker. “He was a young boy quite brilliant who had worked for a long time at PSA and he was still someone quite nice, quite respectful, well integrated into society, ”testified one of his friends to LCI. On RTL, his cousin described him as a “quiet” man. “He had just come for the weekend to see relatives” in Colmar, also explained Tarakhin Sardarwali, 21, who presented himself to AFP as “very close” to the victim. According to him, Quayyeem’s wife, who remained in Afghanistan with their four children, “has been in the hospital” since she learned of her husband’s death. Where is the investigation? On Monday, the Colmar prosecutor’s office opened a judicial investigation against X for “murder” and an investigating judge is now seized of the investigation. “Hearings, exploitation of available videos and telephony, medical and ballistic expertise” are in progress in order to determine the circumstances of the facts and above all “to identify and arrest the perpetrators”, specifies the Colmar prosecutor. Still on the run on Wednesday, two suspects are currently wanted by the police, according to RTL radio. They are the driver of the scooter and one of his accomplices, whom the police have identified. According to a police source, the shooter is not necessarily the driver of the scooter, but was anyway a member of the group. RTL reports that, according to images from surveillance cameras, when they returned with reinforcements, the two perpetrators of the urban rodeo had a gun in their possession. Initially mentioned as a possible trigger for this deadly brawl, the hypothesis of an “urban rodeo” was however questioned on Tuesday during a press briefing by the LR mayor of Colmar, Eric Straumann (LR ), “not entirely convinced” that this assassination is linked to this “phenomenon” and rather evoking a “dispute between” the shooter and Quayyeem. Note that the CRS 8, a mobile unit specially created to intervene quickly, has been deployed throughout the territory. Dispatched after the tragedy by the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin, she has multiplied the checks since Tuesday.