The 42-year-old man suspected of kidnapping and killing his 6-year-old stepdaughter last night in the Seine-Maritime region of France suffered a “fit of madness” before killing the child, according to the victim’s mother. According to the woman, the Rouen prosecutor’s office said, her partner, who “has never been violent, brutally threw Celya to the ground” after an argument late yesterday evening.
“It was like a bolt from the blue,” according to the mother, who is still in the hospital. The woman intervened and received “several stab wounds,” which caused “nine superficial wounds.” The mother then left the house to call emergency services, who upon their arrival could only note the absence of the child and her stepfather.
The kidnapping alarm that went off last night, the presence in the area of ”200 soldiers” according to the gendarmerie, supported by a helicopter, and reports from local residents led to the discovery of the suspect’s car a few hours later, “three kilometers from the house” in a wooded area, along with the lifeless body of little Celya, according to the Prosecutor’s Office.
Public prosecutor Frederic Teillet added that “the forensic pathologist was able to carry out an external examination which revealed extremely violent events, a major fracture of the child’s skull at the back of the head which most likely caused her death.” “Ecchymotic lesions” were also visible all over her body, he continued.
The alleged perpetrator, who according to his partner had “taken cocaine several times during the day,” was arrested shortly after 6 a.m. this morning as he tried to leave the woods near their home in Betteville, said Stephane Gauffeny, general of the Gendarmerie for the Normandy region. He was arrested, “still armed with a knife” but allowed himself to be “questioned without incident,” the prosecutor added. The suspect was taken into police custody for attempted murder of a spouse, kidnapping of a child under 15 and murder of a child under 15, the prosecutor said.
“As for the personality of the alleged perpetrator, I can tell you that he is 42 years old, has been convicted five times since 2009 for drug-related crimes and has already been imprisoned for this type of crime,” explained the Rouen prosecutor. He also suffered from “behavioral problems,” but “was not known for committing violent acts, and the gendarmes have not received any complaints of previous domestic violence” from this couple who had been together for about two years, according to the prosecutor.