Gypsies riot in Saint-Aignan

I left Saint-Aignan yesterday in the middle of a riot and didn't even know it. It must have been going on, or just calming down, when Walt and I drove down to the bridge at about 10:00 a.m., on our way to the train station in Onzain. It was from Amerloque's comment on my blog post yesterday that I learned about it.

Here's the story as I've understood it. Friday night or early Saturday morning, the gendarmes based at the autoroute exit across the river from our village were pursuing a vehicle and had set up a roadblock in the nearby village of Thésée (where there are Roman ruins). A car with a driver and a passenger ran through the roadblock, stopped briefly, and then accelerated abruptly just as two gendarmes were walking toward their car from the front. One of the gendarmes pulled out his pistol and shot at the car — but not the people in it, according to police.

An hour or two later, a body was found dumped on a street in the nearby village of Saint-Romain-sur-Cher. It was somehow identified as the body of the young man who had been driving the car that ran the roadblock in Thésée, or his passenger, six or so miles away. I don't know how all that was determined. He was a gypsy, un manouche, the police reported. Apparently, the members of his community were very angry about his death.

I took a picture in the metro at the Gare d'Austerlitz.
This is an above-ground line (Bobigny-Place d'Italie).

Saint-Romain is the town where my favorite wine co-op is located. I go there often. On the TV news last night, they said that there is a big gypsy community there. I've never seen any sign of such a place. There's a gypsy encampment over near Selles-sur-Cher that I've noticed, and there's one I know about on the other side of Montrichard, but I've obviously been oblivious to what goes on in Saint-Romain.

Anyway, a crowd of people identified on the news as gypsies, or gens du voyage, attacked the gendarme station over at the autoroute exit during the night between Saturday and Sunday. And then on Sunday morning at about 9:00 a.m., the group, made up of as many as 50 people, went to Saint-Aignan and launched an attack on the Gendarmerie there. It's over near the hospital, on the other side of town from where we live.

TV reports said that most of the attackers were wearing ski masks, and some carried crowbars or axes. They cut down and burned three big linden trees, turned over and burned three cars, and entered and looted the neighborhood boulangerie/pâtisserie, taking all the baguettes, croissants, mille-feuilles, and babas au rhum that were in the display cases. The boulangère was quite shaken, as you can imagine; she was interviewed for the TV news. I don't mean to be facetious. Nobody was injured, according to reports.

Here's a link to a video of the incident that was published on the local newspaper's site.

I like this poster I saw in the metro car.
It's about learning a new "tongue" — une nouvelle langue.

Three hundred military personnel were sent to Saint-Aignan to protect the citizenry in the afternoon and for the night. I hope Walt spends a quiet night. I'll write more about this incident as the story develops. It is unbelievable that such a thing could happen in a quiet town like Saint-Aignan. Meanwhile, I had a nice afternoon in Paris, where the weather was beautiful and the food at the Japanese restaurant was, as always, delicious.