On Facebook, the mayor of Colmar Éric Straumann welcomed the intervention of the emergency services “very distressed by this terrible scene”.
An eight-year-old girl was found dead in an apartment in Colmar (Haut-Rhin) where her mother was arrested before being hospitalized in a psychiatric ward, a judicial source said on Monday July 1.
“Several hypotheses – not just criminal – are being examined by investigators. There are many question marks and this woman is presumed innocent, great caution is required,” argued Colmar prosecutor Jean Richert.
Child found dead in her bed
Police responded around 10:40 a.m. Sunday to an apartment where a 30-year-old woman was screaming and throwing objects out of the window. The police used their electric taser to try to control her and then managed to handcuff her on the ground to arrest her. Her eight-year-old daughter was found dead in her bed.
“Elements are suggestive of lesions on the face and thorax, the origin of which remains to be confirmed. We cannot yet conclude that there is a specific cause of death,” said the Colmar prosecutor.
The mother was briefly placed in police custody for voluntary homicide aggravated by two circumstances: by an ascendant and on a minor (under) 15 years old. Given her state of mental health, deemed incompatible with police custody, she was hospitalized in psychiatry. An autopsy of the child’s body must be carried out.
Several hypotheses
“It will be a question of characterizing the lesions in more detail, of determining what caused the death, and of comparing these elements with the mother’s explanations, when she can be heard,” added the magistrate. “To this day, it is particularly appropriate to ask ourselves whether this woman could have killed her daughter in a fit of rage, or whether she could have suffered decompensation after discovering that the little one was dead. This is one of the hypotheses to be studied” .
“The little girl was enrolled in a primary school in the town. Our education department and the National Education system are working to support her classmates and the educational community in the face of this horrible tragedy,” wrote Colmar Mayor Éric Straumann on Facebook, welcoming the intervention of the emergency services, “deeply distressed by this terrible scene.”
