New York subway train hits and kills two French graffiti artists

Two French street artists have died in the US after being hit by a New York subway train while graffiting a tunnel, several French and US news outlets report.

Pierre Audebert, 28, known as Full1 and Julien Blanc, 34, alias Jibeone, were found dead on Wednesday (April 20). Their bodies were identified after their passports were discovered nearby. They were found with spray paint cans.

They were found close to the Utica Avenue subway station, a well-known spot for graffiti artists.

The pair were well known in Toulouse and have also carried out art projects in Morocco, Italy and Spain.

They were in the US on a trip supporting French-Algerian street artist Ceet Fouad, considered to be one of France’s top urban artists.

“As I hadn't heard from them since the evening before, I thought they had been arrested by the police after being caught graffitiing,” Ceet Fouad told La Dépêche.

“When I saw on the news that two people had been hit by a train in the place where they wanted to go, I immediately made the connection.

“I thought of them as brothers, I'm totally devastated by what has happened,” he said.

La Dépêche described them as two artists on the rise who “wanted to realise their dream of graffiting the inside of a New York subway”.

Mr Blanc had two children.

His family have created a fundraiser to cover the costs of his funeral service.

They wrote, “on 20 April 2022 we lost our pillar”.

“Julien was a father, a husband, a son, a brother, a friend.”

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