The proliferation of reports worries and questions. Several investigations have been opened in France after mysterious injections administered to young night owls, most of the time in nightclubs. Many complaints have been filed but, at this stage, no perpetrator has been identified and the results oftoxicological analyzes are pending. Here are five questions that arise around this phenomenon.
1Which places have been affected so far?
Most of these wild bites have been reported in nightclubs in recent weeks. This is the case, in particular, in Nantes (Loire-Atlantique), Rennes (Ile-et-Vilaine), Amiens (Picardy), Béziers (Hérault) and Grenoble (Isère). In this city, cases have been reported in Le Marquee, Lamartine and Alpha Club establishments, but also during a concert at the Sports Palace.
2How many procedures are in progress?
At least four investigations are opened in different cities, for around forty complaints. Ten were deposited in Béziers, by young women and young men who claim to have been victims of “bites” by an unidentified object in two discotheques, the nights of April 6 to 7 and April 17 to 18. About thirty handrails were also registered at the city police station, said a source familiar with the matter to AFP. The public prosecutor’s office has opened a flagrant investigation on the part of the “administration of harmful substances”.
That of Nantes did the same after 17 complaints, out of 23 reports of young people (20 women and 3 men aged 18 to 20) having frequented eight night establishments in the city between February 16 and March 13. The qualification of “intentional violence with a weapon” has been added.
In Grenoble, five young women and two young men also filed complaints. In Amiens, the police opened an investigation after a 23-year-old young woman was hospitalized after receiving an injection in the arm, reports France Bleu Picardie.
3What are the symptoms described by the complainants?
They report bites in different parts of the body (thighs, buttocks, hips, ankles, arms, shoulder, back), medically confirmed in the majority of cases, and describe more or less the same symptoms: hot flushes, nausea, malaise, loss of balance, tingling.
“It was very painful”testified to AFP Noémie, 23, affected “in the thigh, up to the sciatic nerve” last weekend in Béziers. The young woman claims to have been taken to the emergency room by friends after feeling unwell, “rolling eyes”. She also says she was “paralyzed on the right side for two days”. Zoé, a 20-year-old student from Grenoble, “had a black veil all of a sudden in front [ses] eyes”. “I completely lost my vision. (…) During the night, I had a lot of pain in my right buttock and in my leg. Pain like after the Covid vaccine”she says in The Parisian.
4What are the results of the analyzes carried out?
At this stage, most of the results ofThe toxicological analyzes carried out did not make it possible to determine whether a harmful substance had been administered. But as a precaution, those exposed received preventive treatment post-exposure to HIV.
In Nantes, of the 16 samples taken in the process, seven first results were negative for GHB (nicknamed the “rape drug”), said in a press briefing in mid-March the prosecutor Renaud Gaudeul, specifying that the other nine samples had to yet to be analyzed.
In this city, as elsewhere, no “suspicion of sexual assault” has not been reported. In Grenoble, the mother of an 18-year-old girl hospitalized after a sting sensation, however, assures the Dauphine Libere that her daughter was indeed drugged with GHB. Problem : “The examinations to be carried out to look for traces of GHB must be carried out as early as possible and in any case before 8 (blood) or 12 hours (urine)”precise the public prosecutor of Grenoble, Eric Vaillant.
Victims are therefore invited to report as soon as possible to a police station or hospital to take urine and blood samples. In Nantes, a specific sampling procedure has been put in place in collaboration with the Loire-Atlantique departmental public security directorate and the Nantes University Hospital.
5What avenues are being considered?
Neither the origin nor the mobile of these bites have been identified, nor their perpetrators. In Nantes, “no syringe was found on site” or seen on the video surveillance recordings, underlined the prosecutor Renaud Gaudeul, assuring that “the police services are extremely mobilized and the surveillance in the establishments reinforced”. An individual was taken into custody at the end of February as part of this investigation, but he was released without prosecution “after a few hours”.
“Even in the absence of administration of any substance, the author of an injection in such circumstances could be accused of the offense of ‘violence with a weapon’, making him incur a sentence of three years’ imprisonment , even in the absence of total incapacity for work, and with the same system of aggravation of penalties”said in a press release the prosecutor of Béziers, Raphaël Balland.
In any case, a certain psychosis takes over the world of the night, amplified by the testimonies on social networks. For the Nantes prosecutor, the high number of complaints “can be explained by a real increase in the facts as well as by the strong awareness-raising actions which have been carried out by the police services in recent days, in Nantes, with the managers of establishments”.