A 30-year-old was indicted after confessing to the murder of a 14-year-old girl whom he had kidnapped on Friday leaving his college in Tonneins (Lot-et-Garonne).
The man who confessed to having kidnapped and strangled a 14-year-old girl on Friday November 18 in Tonneins (Lot-et-Garonne) was indicted and remanded in custody. He is accused of the kidnapping, kidnapping, murder and rape of the young Vanesa, whose disappearance had been reported the same day by her relatives.
The body of the young girl was found by the gendarmerie, on the indications of the suspect himself, in the night from Friday to Saturday inside an abandoned house located in the town of Birac-sur-Trec, in about fifteen kilometers north of Tonneins.
According to the public prosecutor in Agen, Olivier Naboulet, Romain C. was “confused in his explanations”. He said he spent Friday morning in his car, consuming cannabis, near the Germillac college. It was there that he spotted young Vanesa walking down the sidewalk.
The suspect made him “force into his vehicle before quickly leaving the scene,” according to the prosecutor’s statement. Romain C. told investigators he parked “out of sight” to rape his victim. He then decided to kill her “by strangling her”, to hide his crime.
Investigators reached him thanks to video surveillance images from the town of Tonneins. According to a source close to the investigation, they first made it possible to identify a vehicle and then to go back to its owner. They did not, however, show the teenager getting into the vehicle in question, said this source.
Motivations “of a sexual nature”
Romain C. assured “not to know” Vanesa and “not to have carried out tracking”. His motives were, he said, “sexual in nature.” According to the Sud-Ouest newspaper, this resident of Marmande lived as a couple. He had just had a baby with his partner, already the mother of a 5-year-old child.
The public prosecutor of Agen indicated that the man was already known to the police and was sentenced by the courts in 2008 for a sexual assault on a minor under 15 years old. He had been sentenced to 15 days of detention with suspended probation for a period of 2 years and had no socio-judicial follow-up.
He himself was a minor at the time and was not registered as a sex offender. Since then, the man had also been guilty of several acts of theft and damage.
Schooled in 4th grade, Vanesa was the eldest of three siblings. She lived in Tonneins with her brother, her sister, her mother and her companion. A psychological support cell must be set up on Monday, in his college. The rector, Anne Bisagni-Faure, has planned to go there “to show her support for the students and the teams”.