Investigators strongly doubt his statements.
A 27-year-old man, suspected of murdering his wife on the night of Monday to Tuesday in Chartres, was indicted for murder and placed in pre-trial detention, the Chartres prosecutor's office announced on Thursday.
"Homicide in Chartres the night of May 3 to 4: late last night, in accordance with the requisitions of the prosecution, the victim's husband was indicted and placed in pre-trial detention," tweeted the prosecution.
Homicide in #Chartres the night of May 3 to 4: late last night, in accordance with the prosecution's requisitions, the victim's husband was indicted and placed in pre-trial detention.
- Parquet de Chartres (@PR_Chartres) May 6, 2021
During his custody, the suspect, a waiter in a restaurant in Paris and of Senegalese nationality, claimed to have put to flight an individual who had just assaulted his wife in the parking lot of their building, before warning the firefighters, specifies the Attorney of the Republic of Chartres, Rémi Coutin.
Death by "asphyxiation"
The 26-year-old victim recently gave birth on April 11.
The newborn was placed in emergency foster care in Eure-et-Loir, says Rémi Coutin.
The couple got married in 2014 in Dakar.
The autopsy carried out Wednesday morning shows that the victim "died of asphyxiation which confirms the criminal track," said the prosecutor.
The victim was found unconscious by the emergency services, his face scratched and lying on the ground in front of a door, wearing only a sarong, with a pair of slippers and a cell phone beside her. Her husband was standing beside her, their infant in his arms. Never convicted by justice, he was neither alcoholic nor under the influence of narcotics at the time of the facts, according to the prosecution. It was he who called for help on the evening of the tragedy, around one in the morning, specifies the regional daily Echo Républicain.
The public prosecutor of Chartres revealed that the investigations carried out by the police with the neighborhood and relatives of the couple, but also on the telephony and the CCTV cameras, lead to think that the account established by the suspect "does not correspond at all to reality ”. "Heavy suspicions" weigh on him, he adds. In 2020, 90 feminicides were officially recorded in France, against 146 the previous year.