A 27-year-old detainee, suspected of four sexual assaults and an attempted rape in the Loire, was found dead Thursday evening "with his throat slit" in his cell, where he had been imprisoned the day before after his indictment, AFP learned on Friday from police and judicial sources.
Thursday, in the early evening, his fellow inmate had sounded the alert, claiming to have seen the respondent lying in his bloody bed before the latter fell to the ground.
The supervisors of the prison of La Talaudière (Loire), then the firefighters and the medical team intervened on the spot did not succeed in reviving him.
The privileged suicide hypothesis
"Suicide is the preferred hypothesis, which will have to be confirmed by the autopsy to be performed on Monday," Saint-Etienne public prosecutor David Charmatz told AFP.
According to the first elements of the investigation, the young man "cut his carotid artery by using the piece of blade contained in the plastic razor of the hygiene pack provided by the prison administration", specified for its part a police source.
His arrest took place Monday at his home in Puy-de-Dôme, following a comparison of his DNA profile with that of an individual prosecuted last September for sexual exhibition in this department.
Originally from Firminy (Loire), he was suspected of a total of ten sexual assaults, since March 2016, including at least one attempted rape (in 2017) taking into account five sexual assaults or attempted rapes committed in the Puy-de-Dôme for which he was suspected but which have not yet been attached to his file.
Several victims aged 15 to 50
The known victims are "women aged 15 to 50, assaulted while they were alone in public places, early in the morning or late at night," said the Saint-Etienne prosecutor on Wednesday, specifying that four of them had "formally recognized" the suspect.
The latter had admitted the commission of acts of violence "but not of sexual assault".
Among them, an 18-year-old girl declared in September 2019 that she had suffered sexual assault by a masked individual while she was waiting for a train at Fraisses (Loire) station.
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DNA traces found on his pants had made it possible to isolate a male genetic profile already recorded in the National Automated DNA File (FNAEG), but not yet identified.
This same profile was present in four other cases of sexual assault and attempted rape committed in the neighboring municipalities of Firminy and Unieux.
