his wife indicted for “assassination”

She had alerted the police, claiming to have been the victim of a burglary fatal to her husband Patrice Charlemagne, a university professor. Justine Jotham, municipal councilor in Dunkirk (North), was indicted for assassination and placed in pre-trial detention, announced Friday, September 22, the public prosecutor Charlotte Huet. The suspect “admitted to having stabbed her husband”added the magistrate.

Accused “obviously gave an explanation for his action”, “she participated in the investigation and delivered, I think, everything she had to deliver at that moment”continued the prosecutor, for whom “there is no reason to think that his discernment was impaired”. “Regarding mobile, we have the first elements today” Who “remain to be explored”, she added without further details. She clarified that no “complaint or handrail in the marital sphere” had previously reached the prosecution.

Struck with several stab wounds

A lecturer in literature, the thirty-year-old is among the teacher-researchers at the University of Littoral Côte d’Opale, where the deceased, Patrice Charlemagne, 51, also taught. Elected in 2020 on the list of the mayor of Dunkirk, Patrice Vergriete – now Minister of Housing –, she is also a children’s author and headed a cultural association promoting reading.

She alerted the police at 4 a.m. Monday, claiming that the couple had been awakened by burglars and that she had left the scene with her 20-month-old daughter, while the man remained in the house. The fifty-year-old was found, suffering from several stab wounds, in a bedroom on the first floor of the marital home in Rosendaël, a district on the outskirts of Dunkirk.