Teenage girl stabbed to death in Saône-et-Loire: her boyfriend confessed

The inhabitants of Clessé were in shock on Thursday after the discovery of the remains of the teenager, with numerous wounds and a knife still planted in the neck around 6:40 a.m. on the public road near the town hall and its former primary school this wine village.

In front of the press, the public prosecutor of Mâcon Eric Jallet explained that the investigation carried out by the research section of the Dijon gendarmerie quickly focused on her boyfriend, who was arrested in the morning at the college of Lugny, a town near Clessé, where the victim was also educated.

She was 14 years old, he said, while several sources had initially indicated that she was 13 years old.

Placed in police custody for murder, the schoolboy quickly confirmed having committed the facts.

“He admits having agreed to an appointment with this young girl, having brought a knife which he had placed in his sleeve, and having stabbed her three times in the neck”, explained the prosecutor.

The victim then “tried to flee, but the suspect tried to strangle him and then stabbed him again”, he added, specifying that the two teenagers had become accustomed to meeting between midnight and 4:00 a.m. in Clessé. The girl’s parents had only discovered her disappearance in the early morning.

In addition to the knife planted at the level of his throat, the investigators noted “several dozen traces of stab wounds on the torso, shoulders, face and neck” of the victim, found dressed, as well as several “defense injuries ” on the forearms in addition to a broken nose.

Traces of blood were found on a low wall, then on “a progression path” leading to the body, along which jewelry and then a jacket were found.

Mr. Jallet did not mention a motive at this stage of the investigation, but the first testimonies collected by the investigators indicate that the suspect has already had in the past “disturbing words”, evoking his desire to “kill someone ‘ one and in particular his girlfriend”, with whom he had a relationship studded with ruptures and reconciliations, added the magistrate.

“Incomprehensible”

According to the rector of the Dijon Academy, Pierre N’Gahane, the young girl was in fourth grade at the college of Lugny, a town near her village of Clessé, where she had completed all her primary schooling.

“What happened is totally incomprehensible,” he told BFMTV, adding that “no report of harassment” had been recorded in the teenager’s college.

The rector and the secretary general of the national education services of Saône-et-Loire Mayalen Laxague went in the morning to the Victor Hugo college in Lugny, where a psychological unit has been set up for students and teachers, said the rector.

In Clessé, a wine-growing village of 850 inhabitants located about fifteen km north of Mâcon, the primary school that the teenager had attended was however closed on Thursday. In front of the school, a bouquet of white and pink roses was hastily fixed on a railing delimiting the sidewalk, noted an AFP journalist.

Not far away, a stain of blood could still be seen, and four yellow circles had been drawn on the ground by the investigators on the road leading to the school.

“It’s a horrible day,” Clessé mayor Jean-Pierre Chervier told reporters. The victim’s family is “appreciated in Clessé”, he added, saying that he knew the victim, a “very nice only girl like her parents”.

A judicial inquiry has been opened. Without a criminal record, the suspect risks as a minor a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for murder, according to the prosecutor.