Thirty years of criminal imprisonment were requested Friday at the assizes of Finistère against Sarah Caro for the murder of her five-year-old son, while the accused invokes a "game of the cushion" that went wrong. "It was a five-year-old child who was murdered! A five-year-old wants to live. The murder of a child is intolerable!" said Attorney General Arthur Rigal in his closing argument.
The magistrate dismissed the theory of the accident invoked by the accused, stressing the "sacred determination" that it took to suffocate a child with a cushion. Ms. Caro, 29, had explained to the bar that her asthmatic son had died, on October 20, 2020 in Brest, after playing a usual "cushion game" with him, which consisted of leaning on a pillow placed on his head.
"Rehearsal of a crime scene"
Mr. Rigal observed a one-minute silence during his closing arguments to make the jurors feel the necessarily voluntary nature of the mother's act. This "game of the cushion", "I do not call it a game, I call it the repetition of a crime scene", supported the magistrate. The Advocate General listed the elements suggesting a premeditated act: farewell words on the fridge, photos sent by the accused to her daughter "in memory of us", internet searches on suicide by drugs, etc.
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This project, she had it, "said Mr. Rigal, believing that the accused was "in denial", otherwise she would have "gone mad with guilt, crazy with grief, crazy with shame perhaps". A little earlier, the lawyer of the association "La Voix de l'enfant", Me Laurence Mallet, had also judged "completely absurd" this thesis of the game "which would have allegedly gone wrong". "A child dies on average every five days from domestic violence," she said.
Threatened with eviction
Depressed, holder of the RSA, the accused was threatened with deportation at the time of the facts. She was raising her son alone, who had not been recognized by his father. Her two-year-old daughter, whom she had with another man, was at her father's house when her brother died.
Born to an alcoholic mother in seven siblings, Ms. Caro was placed in foster care until she was 16, before moving to a home and then becoming pregnant with her son at 19. Verdict expected at the end of the day.
