Bénédicte Belair, was found dead at her home on April 4, 2017. A former judicial police officer went there on March 25 for a report of domestic violence, without any protective measures being put in place. place, according to the lawyer for the victim’s sister.
An investigation for “non-assistance to a person in danger” was opened after a complaint from the family of a woman who died in 2017, whom her companion is suspected of having hit, against a former policeman who intervened at the couple’s home a few days before the tragedy, the prosecution said on Wednesday.
This preliminary investigation concerns “all the facts” and not just the gendarme referred to in the complaint, the prosecutor of Senlis Loïc Abrial told AFP.
The victim, Bénédicte Belair, was found dead at her home on April 4, 2017. Her companion was finally indicted in January 2023 for aggravated violence against her, between January 2015 and April 2017. He was also placed under the status of assisted witness for “murder” – an intermediate status between that of witness and that of indicted.
No protective measures in place
The complaint targets a former judicial police officer from the gendarmerie of Pont-Sainte-Maxence (Oise), who went there on March 25, 2017 for a report of domestic violence, without any protective measure having been taken. been put in place, told AFP Sylvaine Grévin, the sister of Bénédicte Belair.
This complaint “was sent to the prosecutor last week,” said AFP Me Célia Chauffray, lawyer for Sylvaine Grévin. According to a source close to the file, Bénédicte Belair “presented that day a bruise under the eye”, noted by the gendarmes.
His companion had also “already been convicted of domestic violence”. But “no shelter or prosecution” had been initiated, she added.
Ten days later, when Bénédicte Belair died, the same gendarme, himself “convicted in 2012 for domestic violence”, intervened in the investigation, lamented Sylvaine Grévin.
An investigation closed without follow-up at first
The investigation was initially oriented towards the trail of a fall, and was closed four months after the events. The relatives of Bénédicte Belair then filed a complaint with a civil action, thus obtaining the opening of a judicial investigation.
But the samples taken at the home and on the body of the deceased had been destroyed in October 2018 following an administrative error. The State was ordered in May 2021 to pay 15,000 euros in damages to Sylvaine Grévin for “gross negligence”.
