French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin on Tuesday revealed information about the identity of a suspect who raped, tortured and murdered a 12-year-old girl in Paris over the weekend. The child’s body was found in a plastic trunk, covered in fabric and drawings, and her head was nearly severed.
The suspect is a 24-year-old female with a history of mental disorders. According to the local press, she is Algerian and was in the country illegally – the newspaper Le Figaro claims that she had arrived in France in 2016, on a student visa, and in August of this year she was arrested because the document had expired. Also according to the vehicle, she had no criminal record and had reported being a victim of domestic violence in 2018.
The woman was arrested on Saturday. Police said they had opened an investigation to clarify the circumstances of the murder.
The Parisian prosecutor’s office reported the details of the crime in a press release. The text states that the suspect initially took the victim to her sister’s apartment, who lives in the same building as the child’s family, and made her take a shower before raping and beating her to death. She even wrote in red “zero” and “one” on the soles of the girl’s feet, identified only by her first name, Lola.
The suspect’s lawyer, Alexandre Silva expressed his condolences to the child’s parents, but asked journalists that discussions on the case be held behind closed doors, underscoring the principle of presumption of innocence. He also denied rumors that the murder was related to organ trafficking or some kind of religious ritual.
Lola disappeared late last Friday afternoon. So her parents, concerned about the girl’s delay in returning from school, contacted the police and posted a description of their daughter and the clothes she was wearing when she left home on Facebook.
A video from the building’s security camera shows, however, that the girl had arrived home at around 3:15 pm, accompanied by a woman in her 20s. About two hours later, footage shows the same woman exiting the building, dressed in leggings and sneakers and carrying three suitcases — one of them, the wheeled plastic container where the girl’s body was found.
The box was found at 11:15 pm in the inner courtyard of the same building by a homeless man. An autopsy performed the following day determined that Lola had died of asphyxiation and had a series of injuries to her face and back.
In addition to the woman, three other individuals were indicted for involvement in the crime on Saturday in the town of Bois-Colombes, north of Paris. One of them is a 43-year-old man who reportedly drove the vehicle that carried the two suitcases and the plastic crate with the girl’s body.
RFI says investigators have not yet determined the motive for the crime, but are exploring the possibility of a dispute between the suspect and Lola’s parents. Managers of the building in which they lived, they allegedly denied the suspect the issuance of an access card to the condominium. Although the murder may have been motivated by revenge, the police do not exclude the possibility of a gratuitous act of violence.
French President Emmanuel Macron welcomed Lola’s parents at the Élysée Palace in Paris on Tuesday (18). Right-wing politicians accuse the government of being responsible for the crime for not having extradited the suspect after it was discovered that she did not have a visa to remain in the country.
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