The investigation into Lina’s disappearance is progressing. Two investigating judges have just been charged with “kidnapping or sequestration”, the prosecutors of Saverne and Strasbourg said in a joint press release on Sunday.
The Saverne public prosecutor’s office, until then competent, relinquished responsibility in favor of Strasbourg which opened a judicial investigation “on counts of kidnapping or sequestration of more than seven days”, according to the prosecutors of Saverne, Aline Clérot, and of Strasbourg, Yolande Renzi. Two investigating judges from Strasbourg will now lead the investigations, according to the same source.
“Black briefcases”
A week after her disappearance in Bas-Rhin, the 15-year-old girl remains untraceable but investigations continue. On Saturday, “the house of a resident of Plaine”, already inspected on Friday, was searched again and seals were placed there in the early evening, according to the regional daily The Latest News from Alsace (DNA).
The accommodation was examined for “several hours” by criminal investigation technicians who came out with “several black briefcases”, according to the Alsatian newspaper, which could not specify whether one or more arrests had taken place. Asked by AFP, the public prosecutor of Saverne, Aline Clérot, did not react.
In the morning, on the basis of “information”, the gendarmes had already carried out “technical and scientific police actions on the side” of a departmental road, near the place of Lina’s disappearance, had indicated in a press release the magistrate. “Bones were discovered” but they were “formally” identified by a pathologist from the Strasbourg forensic institute “as animal in nature,” she added.
A high school student without history
A high school student with no history enrolled in CAP “personal assistance”, Lina disappeared last Saturday late in the morning. She was walking to the Saint-Blaise-la-Roche station, three kilometers from her home, a journey she was used to making, to take the train and join her boyfriend in Strasbourg.
Two witnesses say they saw her walking along the departmental road around 11:15 a.m. A few minutes later, his cell phone stopped ringing. Since then, nothing more, despite the wanted notice launched the next day and the intense searches and investigations deployed since: citizen searches, bodies of water probed by gendarmerie divers, witness hearings have taken place all week, in vain.
A “large-scale coordinated operation”
On Friday, a “large-scale coordinated operation” at “several points in the potential disappearance zone” made it possible to carry out “technical and scientific police actions on several vehicles targeted by the investigation”, indicated Ms. Clérot. “These investigative acts will continue in the coming hours,” she added, without specifying whether these searches had led to the discovery of clues.
Between six and ten vehicles, according to DNA and Le Parisien, were checked on Friday. Searches aimed in particular at “owners of dark-colored Renault Clios”, according to the regional daily. Houses, a supermarket and the Saint-Blaise-la-Roche recycling center were also inspected, according to DNA.
A vehicle that Lina could have ridden in
Relayed Saturday by The Parisianthe testimony of a 15-year-old girl and her father, also living in Plaine, could support the scenario, currently unconfirmed, of a vehicle in which Lina could have gotten into, voluntarily or not.
The two witnesses thus mention the presence on the Monday before the disappearance of a man driving a “gray car”: according to the father, he honked at his daughter who immediately called him “in panic”. The following Thursday, “around 6:00 a.m.”, the same car stopped near the teenager and the driver “started to get out of the vehicle”, pushing her to flee, they still told Le Parisien. According to the father, his daughter was interviewed by the gendarmes.
Rumors on social networks
In addition to a great outpouring of solidarity – the citizen raids brought together several hundred people – Lina’s disappearance also sparked rumors on social networks targeting in particular Tao, her 19-year-old boyfriend, compared by some to Jonathan Daval, convicted in 2020 to 25 years in prison for the murder of his wife Alexia after having publicly mourned her disappearance.
Fanny, Lina’s mother, defended the young man this week on TF1: “It’s no longer possible, I can’t let it happen. Tao is suffering,” she said, visibly very distressed. “We don’t want all the nastiness,” she told DNA again on Saturday. “I have hope, I’m not giving up!” », added this nurse, separated from the father of her daughter.