MISSING JOGGER. After a long week of investigation, the 17-year-old jogger finally confessed, Friday, November 12, to having lied about her kidnapping and sequestration. It remains to be seen the motivations for such a lie.
The essential
- Disappeared during a jog on Monday, November 8, the young Lisa was finally found in a kebab in Sablé-sur-Sarthe, the following evening. But since then, some doubts remained about the revelations of the high school student. She had indeed told that she had been kidnapped by two kidnappers in a green van. But no trace of these elements had been found during this week of investigation.
- During a new hearing, Friday, November 12, she finally confessed to having lied and to never having been kidnapped or sequestered. The teenager is now accused of “denunciation of an imaginary offense”.
- But why did you lie? This will now be the question that the investigators will ask themselves, through a psychiatric expertise of the young girl. According to information from the Parisian, this could be linked to a trauma dating back to the year 2019, during a burglary at the family home.
- Follow the latest information on the hearing and the explanations of the jogger in our live.
Live
13:12 – A lie related to trauma?
This Friday, the young jogger confessed: her disappearance was just a lie. But what were the young woman’s motivations? According to information from the Parisian, the teenager would have explained during her hearing to know a trauma from a previous assault. It would go back to the year 2019, during a burglary at the family home, where alone at home, she had fallen on the thief. After being heard by the gendarmerie, she recognized at the time a high school friend. But the latter had been exonerated by the lack of evidence. Investigators will now have to dig this track in order to disentangle the true from the false.
It took almost a week. The jogger who disappeared on Monday November 8 in Mayenne before being found the next day in Sablé-sur-Sarthe confessed, Friday November 12, during a hearing of more than four hours, to have “lied” in the first version that she had delivered to investigators. The teenager claimed to have been abducted while she was jogging, by two men who put her in a green van. After being held captive in a house, according to her, she herself then managed to flee from the kidnappers, hitting one of them, and walked to a snack restaurant. At the time of these statements, the mayor of Sablé-sur-Sarthe Nicolas Leudière, had promised that the efforts initially made to find the young woman would be maintained “to find the perpetrator (s) of this abject act”, on the air by RMC. “It’s a relief for everyone, I saw it in the eyes of the gendarmes and also for his parents and his family, I think they have lived the last 24 hours very hard,” he said. then added. Finally, there will therefore be no culprit to be found, the search has been suspended.
The decision to open an investigation for kidnapping and forcible confinement on Tuesday, November 9, before the young girl was found, suggested that the trail of the kidnapping was favored by the investigators in charge of the case. Indeed, during the press conference that the prosecutor of the Republic of Laval, Céline Maigné, had given Tuesday 9 around 5 pm, she had declared: “This qualification of kidnapping and sequestration is punishable by a tort in the event that the perpetrator voluntarily and quickly releases the detained person “, appearing to be addressing a possible kidnapper. The same prosecutor wrote on Friday in a statement that “the young girl said she had lied, not to have been kidnapped and to have gone to Sablé-sur-Sarthe on foot”. “According to her, the injuries are of accidental origin. She would have notably cut her T-shirt with a pair of scissors”, continued the prosecution, specifying that the young woman would be “sorry to have caused a major mobilization”.
On Monday, November 8, 2021, at the end of the day, the disappearance of a 17-year-old teenager was reported in Mayenne. The young woman had not returned from her jogging, which she used to do between the municipalities of Saint-Loup-du-Dorat and Saint-Brice. According to the first indications, she had “left her home around 4 pm in the town of Saint-Brice”, then specified the prosecutor of the Republic of Laval, Céline Maigné. The jogger used to run for about an hour, according to testimonies cited by authorities. Not seeing her return, Monday, November 8, 2021 in the evening, her father reported her disappearance to the gendarmerie around 6:40 p.m. He then went himself on the route she usually took. At the edge of the woods, he discovered his GPS watch, his cell phone and his headphones, which showed traces of blood. Also, France Blue Mayenne observes that the application she was using to record her journey time, in order to post it on social networks, suddenly stopped that evening. The Parisian had access to a screenshot of this application, where the course of the young girl was detailed: from 15:49, the young woman would have run 1.23 km before the application stops at a crossroads. At the high school, where she is educated, the students and teachers were informed of the situation when they arrived in class and are extremely shocked.
Following this disappearance, the number of police forces mobilized was considerable. Tuesday, November 9, at the beginning of the afternoon, it was no less than 200 gendarmes from Mayenne, Maine-et-Loire and Sarthe who were mobilized. A squadron, an equestrian unit, a helicopter from Rennes, two dog teams and a river brigade from Nantes helped search for the teenager. From Monday evening 8, the investigation had been entrusted to the Angers research section and to the research brigade of the gendarmerie company of Château-Gontier sur Mayenne. Tuesday morning, around 10 a.m., a dog had been brought to the family’s home and also followed the path that the young woman usually takes to run. Despite the large device deployed, the prosecutor Céline Maigné had also recalled that “the current investigations” were “only beginning” and were “numerous”, specifying that they took place on a field “difficult because extensive”, on 190 hectares. In this context, an investigation for kidnapping and forcible confinement was opened.
The young jogger was finally found, 24 hours later, on Tuesday, November 9. The teenager had “taken refuge” in a kebab restaurant in Sablé-sur-Sarthe, 10 kilometers from where she had disappeared. She would have arrived bloody, her sports clothes partly torn. It was the kebab managers who contacted the gendarmes, the young girl being in a state of shock. The Laval prosecutor confirmed that it was indeed the missing jogger. The latter also held a press conference on Tuesday, November 9 around 5 pm, to take stock of the investigation and announce the requalification in investigation for “kidnapping and kidnapping of a minor”.
However, this Friday, November 12, the trail of the kidnapping fell into the water, while the gray areas of the case gradually accumulated. Le Parisien reported on November 11 that new elements corroborated the first doubts of investigators on the initial version of the young woman. “There are more and more inconsistencies but we must be careful. They could also be explained by the condition of the young woman at the time of her very brief first hearing,” said a source close to the investigation. . The absence of witnesses having seen the green van and the inability of the inspectors to spot this van on the CCTV cameras, as well as the impossibility for the jogger to remember the model of the van, its make or its license plate, added to those doubts. In addition, the suspects mentioned by the teenager had still not been identified hours before the hearing on November 12 – and the 17-year-old had failed to describe them, despite having failed to describe them. never spoke of a balaclava intended to conceal their identity or of a blindfold that they would have put on his eyes.
No details either in her account of the house where she claimed to have been kidnapped, nor of the route she had taken from her supposed flight to the restaurant where she had been found on Tuesday 9. Finally, the mobile of the kidnapping, if it took place, also posed a question – the young girl, according to Le Parisien, had never reported sexual violence. Not more than physical abuse, at least, not to the extent that she mentioned it: the 17-year-old jogger reportedly mentioned punching but appeared to have only a few scratches. Finally, the negligence of the potential kidnappers, who would have confiscated his phone and GPS watch to leave them at the edge of a forest, in evidence, questioned the investigators.
The identity of the 17-year-old has not been disclosed by judicial authorities or the Laval prosecutor. The only elements communicated depict the portrait of a sporty and surrounded young girl who has no profile of a runaway. “She played sports regularly, with her dad, who played football,” testifies one of her neighbors to Ouest France. Le Parisien also describes, based on a testimony from one of his classmates, a young girl who “ran regularly, loved it and had a hell of a stride”. The teenager had said on a daily basis: “We had run together and we had exchanged a lot because I am a volunteer firefighter and she is for her part a member of the young firefighters”. Schooled in the Raphaël Elizé high school in Sablé-sur-Sarthe (Sarthe), the teenager is currently in the final year. His father works in a factory in the same city and is very involved in a local sports association.
During her speech on Tuesday, November 9, the prosecutor of the Republic of Laval had listed some elements of the profile of the missing teenager, explaining in particular that this one did not present “of notable particularity”, that she was “perfectly integrated “,” surrounded “and” sporty “. These details of his personality clashed with the hypothesis of a fabrication, which has nevertheless been confirmed today. Also described by her relatives as a perfectly inserted, balanced and very athletic young girl, some of her high school friends even perceive her as reserved.
According to RTL, Monday evening November 8, a 42-year-old man, in a very advanced state of intoxication, contacted the gendarmerie on numerous occasions, demanding news on the disappearance of the 17-year-old teenager. Arrested the same evening with regard to this behavior considered “suspicious”, he went through a sobering-up cell before being placed in police custody. The potential “suspect” was, according to LCI, known for common law offenses. May no information allowed to establish a link between the man and the young missing.
This Wednesday, November 10 in the morning, the man was released. In a statement, the prosecutor of the Republic of Laval, Céline Maigné, explained that “the investigations carried out have made it possible to clarify the elements having motivated this measure and to rule out the implication of the person implicated”.