"I never wanted to kill my son, never," said yesterday, at the bar, this 29-year-old woman, dressed all in black, with difficult speech and fixed gaze. "I could never have hurt him," she added, while acknowledging that she may have spanked him and showered cold showers in the past.
On the morning of October 20, 2020, in one of the apartments of a low-rent building located rue Frégate-La Thétis, in the working-class district of Saint-Pierre, in Brest (Finistère), this mother is alone with her 5-year-old son. The father of the latter lives in Guadeloupe and has not recognized their child. The young woman is also the mother of a 2 and a half year old girl, born to a different father, who was at his home on that fateful morning. A little girl of whom she is, at the time of the facts, losing custody.
"I can no longer face this life of nightmare, of anguish"
The accused, on a handwritten note found at her home
When the attorney general, Arthur Rigal, asked the accused to comment on the facts, she assured that it was "an accident", and nothing else. She claims to have played with the child a usual game, "that of the cushion". She says they would take turns hiding under the duvet and putting a pillow over each other's head while sitting on it. "I put the cushion on his head; I put it down, I support it, I take it off, she says (...) ». But there, she finds that he "does not move". "I thought he was playing dead," says the accused, who says she took him out of bed and performed a cardiac massage because the child (already suffering from asthma, allergies and severe eczema) had his eyes closed and did not move.
Under the influence of medication or alcohol
At 10:30 am, the young woman calls the fire department. When the Samu arrived, the mother seemed "dazed" and visibly "under the influence of medication or alcohol," according to first responders. The 5-year-old, in his pajamas, lies on his back in his mother's bed. He is in cardiorespiratory arrest. The emergency services are trying to resuscitate him... thirty minutes. The child was quickly transported to the pediatric emergency room at the CHU Morvan. But unfortunately it is too late: the death is declared by the doctors at half past noon. The forensic expertise will evoke a death related to a "severe and very extensive asphyxia syndrome". The mother was referred to the Public Prosecutor's Office two days after the incident; a judicial investigation having been opened for murder.
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During the search of his home, the Brest police had discovered four knives on the bedside table and two handwritten words on the refrigerator evoking a desire to end his life: "I can no longer face this life of nightmare, anguish" among others. Evoking a "desperate act", the young woman, who says she wanted to commit suicide the day before the facts, also asked to rest "in the same grave as her son". Depressed, holder of the RSA, the young woman was threatened with expulsion at the time of the facts.
Already reports before
The deceased child had already been the subject of several "worrying reports" because of repeated absences from school, which he had changed three times in two years. His teacher had once noticed a lump with blood on his forehead: the child had indicated that his mother had slammed his head against a door.
Attending an evangelical community and then a member of Jehovah's Witnesses, claiming to be "very practicing", the accused herself experienced a "chaotic" childhood, made of violence. Born to an alcoholic mother in a family of seven children, she was placed in foster care from the age of 4 until she was 16, before joining a home. During the hearing, she repeated that she had been "very depressed since adolescence".
The accused faces life imprisonment. The verdict is expected this Friday, June 9.