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A 68-year-old pétanque player has died after allegedly being hit with a metal boule during a dispute with a rival team in the French Atlantic resort of Mimizan.
The man was reportedly struck after an argument broke out between one team that regularly plays on the beach and another that plays in town.
The dispute started when the beach group asked to play in town while in search of shade during a heatwave, witnesses told local media.
An 81-year-old has been arrested and is being held in custody, according to the Mont-de-Marsan prosecutor’s office.
“According to the evidence … it seems that it is the 81-year-old man who struck the victim, who is deceased, with a pétanque boule,” Alexa Dubourg, the public prosecutor in Mont-de-Marsan, told local paper Sud Ouest.
She said the incident was “an argument which degenerated into a physical [confrontation]”.
Investigations are continuing to determine the role played by each person in attendance at the boulodrome on 17 June, she added.
Pétanque is a French game that involves rolling hollow steel balls as close as possible to a small wooden ball.
Local radio station Ici Gascogne said the man did not immediately die of his injuries, but instead collapsed minutes later after suffering a heart attack.
One local resident told AFP news agency: “There is a mega rivalry between the beach pétanque players and those in the town but I didn’t think it was at that level.”
