He strangled his ex-wife, then surrendered. Sunday morning, a 35-year-old man surrendered after killing his former partner with an electric cable in Commelle-Vernay (Loire). Placed in police custody, the manager of a hotel-restaurant “is heard by the gendarmes of the research brigade as part of an open investigation into spousal homicide”, the public prosecutor of the Republic of France told AFP. Roanne, Abdelkrim Grini.
According to this source, after the tragedy on Saturday morning, this father of three children, whom he had with the victim and who are aged 16 months to 5 years, dropped them off in Ain where his father lives. He then went Sunday morning to a gendarmerie brigade in the department to confess to the murder. The gendarmes found the body of the victim under a layer of earth, in the back of his pick-up, on the latter’s instructions.
The 82nd feminicide
According to his story, he would have strangled the one from whom he was living separated after an argument using an electric cable then he would have deposited the body in the vehicle and would have covered it with earth. The murder was apparently not committed in the presence of the children, said the magistrate.
The victim, whose autopsy will take place at the beginning of the week at the medico-legal institute of Saint-Étienne, had filed a complaint against her ex-husband a few months ago for non-presentation of children, within the framework of their joint custody.
This would be the 82nd feminicide of the year, the latest updated count of the collective “Féminicides by companions or ex” listing 81 victims in 2022. According to the latest figures from the Ministry of the Interior, 122 women were victims of feminicides in 2021, a number up 20% compared to 2020.