He was nicknamed by investigators the “bus predator”. A 16-year-old teenager, suspected of having sexually assaulted nine women aged 20 to 41 between September 2022 and June 2023, was indicted and imprisoned on Saturday July 15, learned 20 minutes from concordant sources, confirming information from France Info. He is accused of having committed two rapes and seven attempts on women spotted while they were using bus lines in Seine-Saint-Denis. During his police custody, he recognized “almost all of the facts”, specifies a source close to the file.
The assaults responded to a similar modus operandi. The victims were spotted at the bus stop or during the journey, then followed when they got off. The man, whose face was hidden under a balaclava or a hood, literally threw himself on his victims in the middle of the street or in the lobby of their building, strangled them and forced them to touch. If the aggressor was put to flight several times by witnesses, two women in their twenties were raped, in March and May, each time under the threat of a knife.
Kinship DNA
The investigators managed to identify the suspect thanks to the DNA… of his mother. Because if DNA was found on the majority of the crime scenes – thus making it possible to link the cases between them – this one did not “match”. And for good reason: the main suspect, unknown to the police, did not appear on any file. Finally, unlike his mother, known for acts of domestic violence in 2014. The DNA technique known as “kinship” makes it possible to make family connections.
During the investigations, the investigators of the PJ of Seine-Saint-Denis then found that the telephone of the teenager bound near several attacks. It also appears on the CCTV images of stations used by several victims and near the site of the last attempted rape, committed on June 26 on a 20-year-old young woman. The prosecution has opened a judicial investigation. “This may help identify other victims,” said a source close to the investigation.