Man found shot dead in UK van transporting migrants in France

A man has been found shot dead in a UK tradesman’s van carrying irregular migrants parked in a rest stop along a northern French motorway, officials said Saturday.

The vehicle was found on Friday, around 30 kilometres (20 miles) north of the city of Troyes, which is located southeast of Paris and around 300 kilometres from the Channel, according to the local prosecutor’s office.

A suspect “believed to have been present at the crime scene” was arrested early Friday, Troyes’s prosecutor Isabelle Verissimo said.

The body of the 47-year-old man was discovered around 5:00 am (0300 GMT) with “a gunshot wound to his head” on a seat inside the van, which had UK licence plates, she said.

Inside the vehicle police found “around 10 foreign nationals who were irregularly on French territory”, she added, without giving their nationalities nor that of the deceased man.

An initial investigation suggested shots were fired in the Champ l’Epée rest stop as the UK van stopped to park there, and several people then fled the scene, according to the prosecutor’s statement.

The law enforcement office in Reims, north of where the crime happened, was in charge of the investigation.

The Troyes prosecutor’s office said a criminal case would be opened on Saturday for “murder, attempted murder, unauthorised possession of a weapon, aiding the irregular entry, the movement and the residence of a foreigner in France as part of an organised group, and human trafficking as part of an organised group”.