1 Investigations in the outer port of Lorient
Tuesday, at the very beginning of the afternoon, the Lorient investigators, who are now relayed by those of the judicial police of Rennes, directed their investigations towards the wet basin of the port of Lorient, only 500 meters from the places where Iris Coëtmen was last seen by witnesses.
Technicians from the scientific police took samples from a fishing boat, moored to one of the pontoons in the outer harbour. They also carried out numerous readings on a bench, located not far from the transrade pier.
The police were joined there by three teams of divers: two from the Lorient rescue center, another from Vannes. Equipped with a RIB, they got in the water and worked in two places. On the one hand, a team of divers explored at the level of the lift bridge lock, and another at the level of the transrade pier, where a security perimeter was set up. According to our information, these divers brought up a piece of clothing and a glass. Do they have a connection with the young woman? The investigation will endeavor to clarify this.
2 The autopsy confirms the violent death, elements remain to be clarified
The autopsy of the body of the young woman, carried out by two experts at the forensic institute, in the morning, made it possible to “confirm the criminal origin of the death”, underlines the prosecutor of Lorient, Stéphane Kellenberger. He highlights the “intervention of a third party: the victim presented traumatic lesions and hematomas on the level of the head and the face (shocks by blunt objects), prehension lesions on the level of the arms, traces of strangulation with a mechanism of major asphyxiation”.
However, it is not “possible to indicate, at this stage, whether this asphyxia was the result of strangulation maneuvers or whether it had also been induced by drowning, or both successively”, continues the press release from the prosecution. .
In addition, several analyzes (anatomopathological, toxicological, search for diatoms) will be carried out and “will then make it possible to provide answers”.
For the time being, the hypothesis that Iris could have been subjected to sexual violence has not been confirmed: “The autopsy also made it possible to evoke the recent nature of sexual intercourse, without it being possible to affirm the existence of violence in this respect, which only the additional examinations already mentioned will make it possible to determine, subsequently”.
3 Trace the last night as precisely as possible
According to our information, Iris Coëtmen spent her last evening in particular with the boyfriend of her older sister, herself absent. According to a source close to the case, they would have been “heavily alcoholic” until at least 3:30 a.m., as confirmed by the last witnesses who saw them together. Asked the next day, the boyfriend said he woke up with no memory of his night. It was he who was taken into custody on Saturday May 27 at the end of the day and then released 24 hours later. Since then, the investigators have been working to trace the last moments of Iris as meticulously as possible. Tracking dogs, public and private video surveillance cameras, biological samples, telephony: their research goes all over the place.
