Bilal Berreni is the celebrated French street artist who came to Detroit in September 2012, and between trips to France and elsewhere, wandered around the city, meeting people and writing in a journal. He shared a loft in Capitol Park.
Berreni, 23, had survived trips to Libya, Tunisia and Russia before arriving in Detroit.
As Gina Damron and Romain Blanquart write in the Free Press, Berreni was known to visit the vacant Brewster-Douglass housing project on Detroit’s east side. Friends think he liked exploring the ruins and said he sometimes even slept there overnight.
In July 2013, Berenni met a violent end. He was shot in the face and appears to have fallen or been thrown out of one of the dilapidated apartment towers, hitting a tree as he tumbled to the ground. His body sat unidentified in the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office until his name and his name was discovered in March. No one has been charged in his killing, but a homicide officer working the case told the Free Press investigators have persons of interest in the case and believe robbery was the motive.
His parents said their son started his American journey in Miami, hopping freight trains, went on to New York and then traveled to Ohio, where he was arrested and jailed. Detroit police officer Jo Ann Miller, who works in homicide and is investigating Berreni’s death, said she believes that arrest was made by railroad police.
Berreni was fingerprinted. It was those prints that would later help identify his body at the morgue.
After about two weeks, he was released and arrived in Detroit in September 2012, his parents said.
Berreni spent his days reading, writing, going to a Wayne State University library and walking around the city.
He made an impression on his Detroit friends, who called him Billy.
“There’s no way to know what he was ever doing,” one friend said. “And when he disappeared several times, you were just like, ‘Oh, that’s just what he’s doing.’ ”
During the Arab Spring, Berrni traveled to Tunisia, where he painted images, left, of those who had fallen during the revolution. His father, Mourad Berreni, told the Free Press his son told him he was going to “smell the wind of revolution.” He also painted images of refugees in a camp on the Libyan border.
In a 2011 profile in the French daily Le Monde, Berreni was described as a fast-talking and chain-smoking adventurer who drove around Paris on a red scooter with white polka dots. The scooter's brakes were broken.
Click here for more images of Berreni's work.
