Friday afternoon, the disappearance of Lola
Every Friday afternoon, around 3 p.m., Lola returns from the Georges Brassens college located a few meters from her home, rue Manin. But this Friday, October 15, nothing happened as planned.
His parents, building caretakers, are worried. The afternoon is already well under way and Lola still hasn’t returned to the family home. She does not answer phone calls or messages. Together, they decide to report the disappearance of their daughter to the police, who initially suspect a kidnapping.
Some time later, the father looks at the CCTV footage of the building, hoping to find answers. He discovers that Lola entered the building around 3:20 p.m. There she meets a young woman “dressed in white jeans, a white hooded sweater and her gray backpack”, who does not live in the residence. On the last images, the father sees this young woman asking Lola to follow her.
Subsequently, the parents posted photographs of their daughter on social media. We discover the innocent face of this blonde with green eyes. They also posted the CCTV images of the building, where Lola appears for the last time, accompanied by the main suspect.
Friday night, the macabre discovery
Around 11 p.m., Lola’s body is found by a homeless man in the courtyard of the building. It is stored in a plastic trunk, concealed by fabrics. Next to this trunk were two cabin suitcases, the container of which is not yet known.
The police were far from imagining what they were going to discover in this trunk. Found tied up and curled up, the victim has serious injuries to the neck and multiple other lesions on the body. Worse, it has a “0” and a “1”, written in red under each foot.
From a judicial source, the autopsy performed on Saturday determined that the victim died of asphyxiation. She would not present any traumatic lesion of the sexual sphere.
The main suspect, a 24-year-old woman
In charge of the investigation, the Criminal Brigade of the Parisian judicial police very quickly arrested the main suspect, Dahbia B. According to a source close to the investigation, this young 24-year-old woman is known to the police for having been the victim of domestic violence in 2018. She has never attended psychiatric hospitals in Île-de-France, but according to inspectors, she has psychiatric disorders.
What we know at this stage of the investigation is that Dahbia B. was seen on CCTV cameras twice: when Lola disappeared, around 3:15 p.m., and a second time, two hours later, with a trunk which, in all likelihood, is the one in which the body of the young schoolgirl was found.
According to our colleagues from Sunday newspaper, Dahbia B. would have asked a passer-by for help to carry the trunk in his car. She would then have offered him money in exchange for this service, money which would come from organ trafficking according to the suspect’s own words. Seeing a bloody cloth and smelling a strong smell of blood and bleach emanating from the trunk, the man then fled. He would then have presented himself to the police, to give the description of the car in which the suspect fled.
Six suspects in custody
A total of six suspects were taken into custody over the weekend, including the main suspect’s sister who lives in Lola’s apartment building.
Monday morning, at 6 a.m., four of them were released. Only the main suspect and a 43-year-old man, who would have housed and led the main suspect to the scene of the crime, were presented to an investigating judge and remanded in custody at the Fresnes remand center.
While in police custody, the main suspect, who faces life imprisonment, allegedly made a detailed confession, acknowledging that she had “dragged the victim to her sister’s apartment, living in the same building as the child, she allegedly forced her to take a shower before committing sexual assaults and other violence on her resulting in death and she allegedly hid the body in the crate”.
But later, she would have reconsidered her testimony and would now proclaim her innocence loud and clear. The man has always denied his involvement in the murder of the young schoolgirl.
What are the charges against the two defendants?
A judicial investigation has been opened for murder of a minor under the age of 15 accompanied by rape, torture or acts of barbarism and concealment of a corpse.
A shock for an entire neighborhood
The day after the murder, the whole neighborhood is in shock. Several neighbors came to pay tribute to Lola by laying several flowers and letters of support for the family in front of her residence.
Student of a gym club in Seine-Saint-Denis, she was also very popular with parents of students, who found that “Lola was a very cute little girl”, “a baby much more than a teenager”, with a “smiling” and “little chubby” face.
Three days after this tragedy, Lola’s classmates have returned to the school benches. In front of the Georges Brassens college, the city security agents and the college staff welcome the students, still in shock. The rectorate of Paris has set up psychological cells, so that “all (the students) are accompanied, so that we can all be together and discuss”.
The mayor, for whom “the emotion is at its height”, tried to reassure the inhabitants of his district: “What is important is that the main suspect, a priori, be arrested and that he does not there is not a psychopath who is walking in the streets of this otherwise completely calm neighborhood”. However, fear continues to hover for the parents of the Buttes-Chaumont district.
Circumstances and motive to be determined
At this stage of the investigation, no link between the main suspect and the victim has been established. The police are still looking for the motive for the murder. Is it really organ trafficking, or is it rather gratuitous murder?
Currently, checks are underway as to the mental health of the main defendant. These results may be able to tell us more about this macabre affair.
LR