The anger of the family of Stéphane Kameugne. 14 years after the events, the student of arts and crafts was found dead in a canal in Châlons-en-Champagne on December 24, 2008, after an evening at his school, the investigation is slipping. His lawyer, convinced that it is a crime, claims referral to the “cold cases” center of Nanterre, and demonstrates on Friday February 10 at 2 p.m. in front of the Reims judicial court.
>> Disappearance of Stéphane Kameugne in the Marne: 14 years after the death of this student, his family requests referral to the Nanterre cold case center
In the photo, Stephane Kameugne, all smiles, receives his diploma from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta in the United States, where he went to study for a year, dressed in the traditional toga and a mortarboard, American panoply. Other shots sit proudly on the fireplace in the living room of his parents, installed in a pavilion in the Paris suburbs. Fourteen years after his death, his father is still as bruised. “He was a brilliant boy. From a very young age, he was always very alert”, remembers Samuel Kameugne. A childhood in Cameroon, a Prépa Math Sup’ preparation at Lycée Louis-Le-Grand in Paris, entry into the School of Arts and Crafts in Châlons-en-Champagne, an exchange in the United States. “My son, that was everything to me.”
“Original defect in this file”
This fight for the truth has become today “his only reason for living”, bring to justice the murderer of his son. Because, for him, there is no doubt, “it was not an accident. Stéphane was killed, but justice was not up to par“, he decides.
On December 24, 2008, it was by a phone call from the prosecutor of Châlons that he learned the terrible news. Stéphane has just been found dead in a canal. The 24-year-old student had disappeared 15 days earlier, on Friday December 9, during a gala evening at the National School of Arts and Crafts where he was finishing his course.
From the outset, the judges are convinced that it is a driver who knocked down Stéphane Kameugne in the night and who fled. The autopsy shows broken ribs to the right and left of his spine. “He had been drinking a little for the prosecutor, he fell six meters into the water and he died”. But his father doesn’t believe it, he thinks something happened in the school and demands a second, then a third autopsy, which show that Stéphane was beaten to death with a blunt object. The parents travel to Châlons to try to find out more and wonder: why weren’t all of his school friends heard? Why were the DNA traces not found inside Stéphane’s car, when the vehicle disappeared the night of the tragedy before reappearing?
For the lawyer of the family master Didier Seban: “There is an original vice in this file which is that we do not want to cause a scandalhe believes. We don’t want to disturb a prestigious establishment, because Arts and crafts is the pearl of Châlons. It all hurts the school, plus a black student killed at a school party.”
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Education still in progress
The lawyer therefore requests referral to the “cold cases” center of Nanterre, but the Reims public prosecutor’s office refuses to transfer the file. Reached by telephone, Mathieu Bourette, the Reims prosecutor assures “that no investigation file is neglected, that this one is still active, in progress and that it does not fit into the profile of the files to be sent to the cold cases pole”.
Something to make Didier Seban angry: “We do not put the means into the investigation! It will be 15 years since he was killed, typically the kind of file that should go to the pole”, he underlines to franceinfo. For the father of Stephane Kameugne, it is incomprehensible: “It’s been 14 years that, for us, the file is blocked, sequestered in the court of Reims. It has never evolved apart from the various requests that we have made”. And to conclude, with bitterness : “Unfortunately for me, we had in front of a justice which had only one concern, to close this file”.