Successful French singer Kendji Girac was shot in the chest Monday morning in circumstances that are still unclear, before being hospitalized near Bordeaux (southwest).
The 27-year-old singer, who promoted the identity of the gypsy community from which he comes, would have told the emergency services that he had bought the weapon, a Colt 45, in a flea market and had injured himself while handling it, declared to AFP a source close to the matter.
The investigators, who have not yet heard him, are not ruling out any leads, according to a source close to the investigations.
Gendarmes secured the traveling area of Biscarrosse, on the Atlantic coast, where the singer was overnight, all morning, before leaving the place at the start of the afternoon, noted a journalist from the AFP.
“Not a settling of scores”
“It’s not a settling of scores, it’s an accident. He played with the thing and bam,” Emilio, a sixty-year-old who introduced himself as his uncle, told AFP.
“We played guitar, quietly. An accident happens anytime, at any hour,” he adds, referring to an evening the day before.
Around 5:30 a.m. Monday (11:30 p.m. Sunday in Quebec), police were called to a man seriously injured by gunfire. When they arrived there, the singer had already been evacuated by road towards Bordeaux, about an hour away.
Sources close to the investigation and the firefighters indicate that his vital prognosis was never in jeopardy, contrary to initial indications. The firefighters spoke of “a serious wound”.
An investigation has been opened, according to a source close to the investigations, but the French justice system indicated that it could “for the moment” provide “no information” on this matter, suggesting that a press release would “possibly” be issued on a little later in the day.
Millions of records
The camp where the events took place, occupied by the Traveler community, is not known for recent acts of violence.
Originally from Périgueux (Dordogne, southwest), Kendji Maillé, his real name, was born into a family of Catalan gypsy origin.
He began singing in cafes at the age of 13, where he stood out thanks to his tenor voice and his mastery of the guitar, which had become his favorite object.
The singer was made famous “a little by accident”, in his words, when in August 2013 his uncle published a video in which he covers the song on guitar Bellafrom Gims.
He then won the show The Voice in France in 2014 and sold millions of records, driven in particular by his successes Color Gitano Or Andalusianviewed hundreds of millions of times on YouTube.
With more than 5 million albums sold, he has also become a pillar of Les Enfoirés, a troupe of artists singing in favor of the French charitable organization Restos du Coeur.
“The basis remains and will always remain the gipsy to which I add sounds that may interest me, because the particularity of the gipsy [popularisé par les Gipsy Kings]is that we can mix it with everything,” he told AFP in 2021.