An 18-year-old cyclist with the AVC Aix-en-Provence team was shot in the shoulder during a training ride on Tuesday. Clément Delcros was riding near his home in Toulouse when the incident occurred but says he has no idea why anyone would want to shoot him.
“I was at the end of a training session and was a kilometre from home,” he told Direct Velo. “I was riding at 50km/h on a gentle downhill. We were on a ‘normal’ road. I saw a car driving the other way and when it was alongside me, I heard a bang.
Delcros saw that he had a wound in his left shoulder, but at first assumed someone in the car had thrown a stone or something. “I really didn’t realise straight away. I was bleeding heavily and I stopped immediately. People asked me if I needed help, but I was near a hospital so I went straight there, on my bike.”
At the hospital, he discovered that he had a small calibre bullet deep in his shoulder. Fortunately it hadn’t struck anything serious.
Video: US cyclist films riding buddy getting shot on club run
“I’m fine,” he said. “I can move my arm. I was sad at the time and a little shocked. When I realised, I said to myself ‘there really are idiots’.”
Delcros said no-one has anything against him and he can’t think of a reason why anyone would shoot him. He appears to see the incident as a one-off and is not apprehensive about riding in the same area again. “It cannot happen to me twice,” he said.
He said he planned to file a complaint with police after he had visited the hospital again on Wednesday but didn’t hold out much hope that anything would come of it.
“I doubt it will be of much use. There’s not much chance of finding the culprits. I don’t even know the make of their car.”
19 thoughts on “French amateur cyclist shot in the shoulder during training ride by someone in passing car”
Sublime display of rule 5.
Sublime display of rule 5. Hat!
Sorry, am I dreaming ? Does
Sorry, am I dreaming ? Does it actually say “At the hospital, he discovered that he had a small calibre bullet deep in his shoulder.” ?
hirsute wrote:
Well, they’re kinda hard to see as they exit the gun, and roadside self-surgery isn’t particularly common, so at the hospital is the likely place to find a bullet in your shoulder. The sentence makes perfect sense, really 🙂
Just a flesh wound. It was
Just a flesh wound. It was his own fault for not wearing a kevlar suit of armour.
I assume the doctors
I assume the doctors discovered it.
No gun control argument yet?
velo-nh wrote:
It was in France. The french know how to control guns even though they re much more liberal than the UK
velo-nh wrote:
Why? Are you looking for one?
felixcat wrote:
Im game.
In the USA they would have
In the USA they would have done the job properly, with a machine gun.
In the USA they would have
In the USA they would have done the job properly, with a machine gun.
felixcat wrote:
Plenty of AKs running around in Paris. Wouldn’t say they’ve got it under control.
velo-nh wrote:
Fortunately, what you ‘say’ matters little since incontrovertible statistics are so readily available via the most minor of googling.
Number of gun homicides per 100,000 inhabitants:
France 0.2
USA 4.6
No contest. USA, USA, USA!
“
Shortly before leaving America for Britain, after 12 years as a correspondent, the relative of one of my son’s friends politely declined my invitation to visit us in London.
“I don’t think I could go to Europe,” she said. “It doesn’t seem safe.”
Try as I might I could not suppress a laugh. My wife and children are African American. I am British. We were living in Chicago.
“The odds of you being shot dead here are far greater than of you being killed in a terrorist attack over there.”
“Let us leave aside for the moment the fact that since 9/11 not a single American has been killed in a terrorist attack by a citizen from the countries on this list. The reality is that an American is at least twice as likely to be shot dead by a toddler than killed by a terrorist. In 2014 88 Americans were shot dead, on average, every day: 58 killed themselves while 30 were murdered. In that same year 18 Americans were killed by terrorist attacks in the US. Put more starkly: more Americans were killed by firearms roughly every five hours than were killed by terrorists in an entire year. It is unlikely that scrapping a rule requiring extended background checks for gun purchases by some social security recipients suffering from mental illness will improve the situation.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/08/trump-muslim-terrorists-gun-violence-america-deaths
felixcat wrote:
I think it boils down to people in the U.S. being kept as frightened as possible by their media. In Britain, we have the old “stiff upper lip” attitude that has carried us through years of IRA bomb threats.
hawkinspeter wrote:
Would that be the IRA bomb threats carried out by “soldiers” funded by helpful Americans who were in no way funding terrorism…? Just checking.
brooksby wrote:
I think you’ll find that the U.S. were funding “freedom” from the old enemy oppressor.
hawkinspeter wrote:
Maybe, but I thought we were supposed to condemn blowing up non-combatants…
brooksby wrote:
It seems to depend on whether it was done by glorious freedom fighters or despicable terrorists.
hawkinspeter wrote:
If only there was an easy way to differentiate them.