The mother of the child found dead on Saturday on the banks of the Huveaune river in Marseilles admitted to having killed his autistic son “with the help of a knife taken from the kitchen”, and this as early as Friday, the prosecution announced in a press release on Sunday. Placed in police custody on Saturday evening, this 39-year-old woman admitted to first “hitting her son” in her apartment on Friday, the day she reported him “disappearing”, before taking him “into the ‘ravine ‘” (Editor’s note: on the banks of the Huveaune) where the lifeless body was found on Saturday by the child’s father and uncle.
It is “on the spot” thatshe killed him with that knife, said the prosecutor of the Republic of Marseille Dominique Laurens, stressing that the child had “died in the afternoon, even before the report of his disappearance”. The explanations of the mother, who said she “returned shortly afterwards to get rid of things”, match the “elements collected (…) both at her home and along the banks” as well as the images from the cameras video surveillance, added the prosecution.
Initial findings had motivated the custody of the mother
Before discovering the body of the child, Saturday at midday, down a steep slope overlooking the water, in tall grass and brush, his father and uncle had first found his jacket , at 08:30 in the morning, a hundred meters away, also on the banks of the Huveaune, in the popular district of Capelette. As of Saturday, the first “findings of the technical and scientific police in the apartment” had motivated the placement in police custody of the mother, recalled Ms. Laurens on Sunday.
To the investigators, she spoke of “the crises” from which her 11-year-old son, autistic, suffered, explaining that “she could no longer manage the situation”: “That day”, Friday, she “estimated that it would never end”, details the magistrate in her press release. The custody of the mother is extended and it will be presented Monday to an examining magistrate for “an opening of judicial information on the count of murder of a 15-year-old minor”, indicated the prosecutor.