It wasn’t his first attempt. The man imprisoned after fatally mowing down his ex-partner on Friday in Riedisheim (Haut-Rhin) had already been convicted twice for domestic violence against the victim, the Mulhouse public prosecutor said on Tuesday. The ex-partner, aged 33, was also pregnant. The child “she was carrying did not survive,” Edwige Roux-Morizot said at a press conference.
Indicted on Sunday for murder of a partner and intentional violence and placed in pre-trial detention, the 42-year-old man was sentenced in October 2022 to ten months of probation for violence against the thirty-year-old. And on April 8, he was again sentenced for similar acts in immediate appearance to eighteen months in prison, ten of which were suspended on probation for two years with a ban on appearing at the home of his ex-partner and a ban on contact with her, she clarified.
The eight months were to be held in home detention under electronic surveillance but “the accused (…) had joined his family in the North, and was domiciled within the jurisdiction of the sentence enforcement judge (JAP) of Arras,” according to the prosecutor.
The ex-companion, however, “returned on (Friday) May 17” to Mulhouse “with the agreement of his ex-partner” to “discuss the situation of their 22-month-old daughter”, under judicial placement, he said. she continued. She was also the mother of a 7-year-old child from another relationship.
A first argument broke out in a parking lot in Mulhouse, where the man pushed and caused the thirty-year-old to fall. Witnesses alerted the police but the man fled. Transported to hospital, the former companion then quickly left the establishment.
“No failure” of justice?
“We don’t know if it was she who contacted her ex-partner, or if he was waiting for her” but “she found herself” in “the latter’s car” where another argument broke out in Riedisheim , indicated the magistrate. According to witnesses, she left the vehicle. Her ex then reversed “before rushing at him” and fleeing, she added.
Helicoptered to Strasbourg in absolute emergency, she died on Saturday. “There was no failure” of justice, insisted the prosecutor: the Arras JAP, in particular, “had four months to put in place” the sentence adjustment.
The victim had also “not requested protection” nor asked to “benefit from a serious danger telephone”, Ms. Roux-Morizot further explained, recognizing that the ex-spouse “had a worrying profile”: in addition to the Past convictions, he “suffered from very serious addictions”.