The family of little Léa, killed in 2018 in Mairieux (North) when she was 2 years old, is in shock. The girl’s murderer was released this week, following a reduced sentence. Sentenced to eight years in prison by the juvenile court of Avesnes-sur-Helpe (North) in 2019, the young man, now aged 20, regained his freedom after six years of detention.
The latter will be subject to socio-judicial monitoring until 2034 with a ban on coming into contact with the victim’s family or appearing at their home, specifies The Voice of the Northwho revealed the information.
“Total disgust”
“It is with deep sadness and total disgust that we announce the early release of the person responsible for the tragic loss of our Léa,” denounced the family, who speaks of “a new ordeal”, in a message published Wednesday on Facebook.
Léa was to celebrate her 9th birthday on September 29, 2024. “The nine candles will remain extinguished,” the family says in this long message.
In May 2018, Léa’s body was discovered in a watercourse, stripped bare, “scarred with twenty-two stab wounds”, at the bottom of the garden of her grandparents’ home in Mairieux, a village in 700 inhabitants near Maubeuge.
“I didn’t know it would be the last kiss”
“I will always remember May 21, 2018, when I was in the garden making my summer planters and your mother was repainting her garden furniture. You came to see me after giving your mother a kiss and you said to me: “Papi, I’m coming to give you a kiss”, you added: “Papi, I love you very much” in your little voice. At that moment, I didn’t know that it would be the last kiss and that I would hear your voice for the last time,” says Alain Marmignon, Léa’s grandfather, in a vibrant message on his Facebook page.
The teenager convicted of murder lived with Léa’s grandparents, who had taken in foster children for several years. During his trial, the minor, “having difficulty in his faculties of understanding and expression”, had “explained various elements relating to his placement conditions, but had not given a real explanation of his act”, observed at at the time Cécile Gressier, public prosecutor of Avesnes-sur-Helpe.
A minor prosecuted for “murder of a minor under fifteen years of age” usually faces twenty years of criminal imprisonment but “in this case, the experts unanimously concluded “the serious alteration of his mental faculties”, which reduces the sentence to thirteen years. penalty incurred.