As far as his friends at the outdoor gym knew, the always cheerful 39-year-old man from a hardscrabble suburb of Paris had left his past behind. He no longer talked much about his years as a star of the city’s urban dirt bike subculture, a rider known as “Doudou Cross Bitume” who made his name doing wheelies up the Champs-Élysées.
When asked why, his friends said, he told them he had since had children and didn’t want them associating him with that bad-boy image. Weaving in and out of traffic at high speeds on just one wheel in so-called “urban rodeos” was eventually deemed so dangerous, it was later made punishable by prison time.
He also did not talk about a criminal past.
Now Abdoulaye N., has been charged in one of France’s highest-profile burglaries — accused of being one of the four men who made off with more than $100 million worth of France’s crown jewels from the Louvre.
“I still can’t believe he’s involved in this,” said Medhy Camara, 35, a friend from the outdoor workout park who said they grew up together and that he had always considered Abdoulaye an older brother. As his eyes filled with tears, he added: “I don’t understand now, but I have faith in the justice system. I tell myself, I will understand later.”
To be clear, Abdoulaye N. has not yet stood trial; he is only charged in the Louvre heist. But his arrest just days after the spectacular burglary is the talk of his gentrifying suburb of Aubervilliers, located at the end of the northern Parisien subway where decommissioned factories are being converted into artist studios. Some are even calling him the Lupin of Aubervilliers, after the fictional gentleman thief repopularized by the Netflix series starring Omar Sy.
The chief prosecutor has not released his name, but has provided information about a 39-year-old accused of entering the Louvre for the heist. The 39-year-old, according to a court document in an unrelated case cited by the Louvre prosecutor, is named Abdoulaye N.
The other suspects have not been identified by the authorities, so their back stories are not yet known.
According to Paris’s chief prosecutor, Laure Beccuau, two men broke into the Louvre’s gilded Apollo Gallery and used a disc grinder to crack open two bulletproof display cases, grabbing precious items, including a tiara worn by the country’s last empress, encrusted with 212 pearls and almost 3,000 diamonds.
Once back outside, the men sped off on two high-powered motor scooters with two accomplices, the authorities say. In their haste to leave, with the police less than a minute away, the suspects left behind many items. A glove. A motorcycle helmet. The truck with its mechanical ladder that had lifted two of the men to a second-floor window they broke open.
Most important for the authorities, they also left behind the DNA that the prosecutor says led them to three of the four men accused of being directly responsible, including Abdoulaye N., who are now charged in the crime. One man remains at large, and the jewels have yet to be found.
Abdoulaye N.’s DNA was already in France’s large database because of his criminal record, which includes 15 entries, two for theft, according to the chief prosecutor. Little information has been released, but in one case, in 2008, he rammed a car into an ATM. Then, in 2015, he was convicted of another theft.
During a hearing for the two men accused of entering the Louvre, they made statements admitting to being involved in the theft but minimized their roles, according to Ms. Beccuau. The New York Times has reached out to Abdoulaye N.’s lawyers; after his arrest, one of them, Diala Al-Shaman, said in a text message that she had no comment.
Interviews with several workout friends and a neighbor in recent days, plus details about the 39-year-old from the prosecutor, offer a basic sketch of Abdoulaye N.’s life up until now.
He was born and grew up in Aubervilliers, a suburb that is home to many immigrants and their descendants. It was there, in the northern outskirts of Paris, that he was raised in a large family by parents who had emigrated from West Africa, according to Mr. Camara.
He worked as a laborer in many different jobs, from delivery, to driving an unlicensed taxi to doing stints in construction, according to the chief prosecutor or people who knew him.
For years, his claim to fame was as an early “urban rodeo” rider. Videos captured his dangerous high-speed motocross tricks performed on busy highways, bike paths and streets around Greater Paris. He began posting them onto Dailymotion, a French version of YouTube, as early as 2007, gaining notoriety and the attention of rappers like Mac Tyer, who mentioned him in a song.
He called himself “Doudou Cross Bitume” — shorthand for urban motocross mixed with the diminutive nickname Doudou.
“We consider him a legend in the community,” because of how early he took to the practice and because of the risks he took, said the French urban motocross influencer Alan Henry, who goes by the moniker Weediful and whose YouTube channel has more than 630,000 subscribers.
The French newspaper Le Parisien was the first to report that Abdoulaye N. is the online persona “Doudou Cross Bitume.” The Times spoke with three of his workout buddies and a neighbor, who all confirmed Doudou Cross Bitume was Abdoulaye N.
Another of his lawyers, Maxime Cavaillé, said he would not “confirm or deny” the online persona was his client, explaining that he wanted to protect his privacy.
In more recent years, Abdoulaye N. posted videos of what appeared to be his new passion: working out at outdoor gyms. The postings showed him doing impressive tricks and feats of strength.
He is often smiling, wearing a bandanna knotted at his forehead. “There are things that happen in life,” he said in a video he posted in September, after he missed a flight because, he said, he was exercising. “Now I’m looking for a place to sleep at the airport. Cross Bitume missed the plane. Ay caramba.”
At an outdoor gym in southern Paris, close to the Accord Arena where Beyoncé and Lady Gaga have played, Abdoulaye N.’s workout friends remained in shock on a recent day at reports of his arrest.
He was a regular there at the collection of monkey bars and free weights under a copse of trees, where a group of men gather every evening to work out to music and film one another doing difficult routines.
They described him as kind and generous, often arriving to workouts with fresh fruit to share, as well as pastries and a birthday cake to celebrate one of the men’s birthdays. Then, he would leave to go take care of his kids, they said.
Shenty Alexis, a professional athlete of the sport known as “street workout,” said he started training alongside Abdoulaye N. about a year ago. When he learned that his new friend was the famous urban rodeo rider he had watched in videos as a teenager two decades ago, he asked him why he’d never said anything about it.
“He said to me, ‘Ah yes, but that was when I was young, you know,’” said Mr. Alexis, 35, who goes by the name he uses in competitions and exhibitions. “And I said to him, ‘Yeah, but wait, that’s you.’ He said, ‘Yes, but you see, now I have children, you see, I don’t really want them to associate me with that.’”
The last video Abdoulaye N. posted on his TikTok feed on Sept. 11 featured Mr. Alexis, a promoter of street workout who did demonstrations during the Paris Olympics two summers ago, doing acrobatic flips on outdoor bars. Seen more than a million times, the video has also been broadcast around the world with reports about the arrests in the Louvre heists but does not make clear that Mr. Alexis is not a suspect. As a result, Mr. Alexis has since been stopped by strangers on the street, accusing him of being a thief and asking him where the jewels were hidden, he said.
Some people online have spewed racist comments about him. He has hired a lawyer to go after media companies broadcasting his image, he said in an interview, and he filed a police complaint for defamation.
“He’s really the last guy I would have thought of for something like that,” he said of Abdoulaye N. and the heist. “Maybe he had money problems or something, I don’t know.”
Ségolène Le Stradic and Ana Castelain contributed reporting from Paris.
Catherine Porter is an international reporter for The Times, covering France. She is based in Paris.
The post Friends Say a Suspect in the Louvre Heist Had Tried to Leave a Rough Past Behind appeared first on New York Times.
