The body of a five-year-old child was found Tuesday in an apartment in Rambervilliers, in the Vosges. A teenager “known for acts related to sexual abuse” was taken into custody.
A five-year-old girl was found dead Tuesday in a bag in an apartment in Rambervillers, in the Vosges, and a teenager was taken into custody, we learned from a source close to the investigation.
The investigations were entrusted to the Nancy research section. A judicial investigation has also been opened by the prosecution for murder.
Disappearance during the day
The parents, a Romanian family residing there, had reported the disappearance of their daughter at the beginning of the afternoon, explained the mayor of the town of 5,000 inhabitants, Jean-Pierre Michel at the microphone of BFMTV.
The child was playing in a park in the town when his parents noticed his disappearance. After trying to find their daughter in the square, the parents began searching the surrounding area, before notifying the police.
The body found naked in an apartment
“The girl was found in an apartment, lifeless,” explained the mayor of Rambervilliers on Tuesday evening at the microphone of BFMTV. “The municipal police officers intervened first, they were the ones who discovered the body, and then the help came, they tried to give heart massage, but there was nothing to do, there was too late unfortunately,” he said.
The naked body of the victim was found, according to the local daily The Lorraine Republicanin a garbage bag in an apartment located rue du Parmoulin, a hundred meters from his home, rue du Cheval Blanc.
On Tuesday evening, an AFP photographer saw uniformed gendarmes and two investigators in white coveralls at the foot of the building where the lifeless body was discovered. The police blocked access to the street in this old part of the city, deserted and plunged into total darkness after 10 p.m.
According to a source close to the investigation, the teenager was taken into custody. He was arrested in the apartment where the girl’s body was found. Another source close to the investigation specifies that he is suspected of having moved the corpse.
The suspect is “known for sexual abuse”
According to the mayor of Rambervillers, the young man, “aged 15 or 16”, was “known to the municipal police and certainly to the gendarmerie, for acts related to sexual abuse”. According to the neighborhood, he had been living in his apartment for over a month.
“He would have attracted young children to have inappropriate gestures of a sexual nature,” said the mayor of the small town located about thirty kilometers northeast of Epinal.
“This young man had been placed. Only a few weeks ago he had reappeared on the territory of Rambervillers, which worried the municipal police a little bit, who were attentive”, declared Jean-Pierre Michel, without be able to tell whether or not the teenager is from the small town.
According to The Lorraine Republicanthe young man suffers from psychiatric disorders and was released “a few weeks ago” from a specialized institution.
The teenager tried to “cover the tracks”
According to the mayor of the town, the parents initially “asked local residents if they had not seen their daughter by describing her, by describing how she was dressed”. The young man “said he saw a girl giving a direction completely opposite to where she was found. It was probably to cover the tracks”, according to Jean-Perre Michel.
In the early afternoon, the suspect knocked on the door of one of his neighbors: “At 2 p.m., 2:30 p.m., he asked my father where we could put the garbage bags in the containers, but he knows it because he’s been there for a month,” shares the resident.
Around 4 p.m., he contacted the gendarmerie to explain that he had just found a garbage bag in which was the lifeless body of a little girl in front of his home. The municipal police, the first to arrive on the spot, quickly find the bag not in the street but in the apartment of the teenager.
“This young man was arrested (…) he is the alleged perpetrator,” explained Mayor Rambervilliers. “Everyone has returned (…) A child who dies, if it’s accidental, it’s dramatic, but in such conditions, it’s even more painful, it’s inexplicable,” he said. he adds.
According to the radio France Bluethe public prosecutor of Epinal will give a press conference this Wednesday morning.
“What does the investigation a great service is the video protection”, welcomed the mayor of Rambervillers. “We have between 40 and 50 cameras deployed in the town, which makes it possible to certify the facts. The tapes were recovered to be analyzed by the competent services”.
