A septuagenarian, arrested on Sunday after having killed his 43-year-old companion with several stab wounds in front of their children, in Fréjus (Var), was indicted and imprisoned on Tuesday for aggravated murder, said the Draguignan prosecutor's office.
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The facts took place early Sunday afternoon, at the home of this couple of Portuguese nationals, both born in Sao Tome and Principe and not in Cape Verde as indicated in error during the first observations of the investigators.
Police, notified by neighbors, had discovered the woman lying on the ground, while the 71-year-old husband tried to escape before being arrested.
In custody, the respondent explained that an argument had broken out between them and that it was only in response to an assault on his partner that he had stabbed her.
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The children, present at the scene and aged 6 and 12, were placed in a child welfare home.
In August, the Draguignan prosecutor's office had dismissed a procedure in which the alleged perpetrator of the fatal stabbing on Sunday appeared rather as a victim.
Injured in the head, he had refused to file a complaint, explaining to have cut himself with glass, whereas his companion was suspected of having given him a stab.
On February 2, Minister of Justice Éric Dupond-Moretti announced that 90 cases of murder of women by their spouse or ex-spouse had been identified in 2020 in France, the lowest since the establishment of statistics on this type. of facts fifteen years ago.
In 2019, 146 women were killed, 25 more than the previous year.