A sad epilogue in an uneventful town. A year after the disappearance of young Lina, who had left his home in Plaine in Bas-Rhin, shock and emotion invaded another village nearly 400 kilometers away: Sermoise-sur-Loire, in Nièvre.
This Wednesday, the usual calm of this town of 1,600 inhabitants was suddenly disrupted by the discovery of the teenager’s body. The end of thirteen months of mystery and waiting for her loved ones, who increased calls for witnesses to find the Alsatian.
“We had to pass 20 meters from the kid”
Hope ended at the end of the hamlet of Tuileries. There, the body of the 15-year-old girl rested in the bed of the Peuilly, a small stream which has its source south of Nevers and which ends in the Loire. Passing through the woods.
A view of the Peuilly stream, near the area where Lina’s body was found, in the hamlet of Tuileries in Sermoise-sur-Loire (Nièvre), this Thursday October 17, 2024.
PARIS MATCH
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© HAKIM MOKADEM
“This summer, my daughter came to visit me, we walked the dog, we had to pass 20 meters from the stream where they found the kid” confides Bernard, who came 20 years ago to enjoy the tranquility of the hamlet of around sixty inhabitants.
House on hillock, view of the research area
At the forefront of the search area: a couple of livestock veterinarians (cows and horses) whose house on a mound adjoins a field and the beginning of a wooded area. “It was practically in front of their house that Lina was found,” says Bernard, still in shock.
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Two houses away, Sylvie is also stunned. This retired nurse takes the Tuileries route daily, the only route in the hamlet and a shortcut well known to local residents, to reach Magny-Cours and Nevers. “I sleep with the window open, we are in a town where nothing ever happens. I couldn’t imagine being two steps away from the corpse,” laments the septuagenarian.
The hunt for Samuel Gonin, the alleged murderer of Lina who died in prison, led investigators 70 kilometers away, to Corancy, in September.
Manuel De Jesus, the mayor of Sermoise-sur-Loire, in his office at the town hall, this Thursday, October 17, 2024.
PARIS MATCH
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© HAKIM MOKADEM
And at the Sermoise town hall, the passage of the Franc-Comtois in a Ford Puma in the town remains a mystery: “We completely ignore what brought him here or even how the investigators were led here. Thanks to GPS? At the boundary? To a hunter or a walker? » asks Manuel De Jesus, the mayor of Sermoise-sur-Loire.
Sermoise, scene of the suicide of Pierre Bérégovoy
This Thursday, the Route des Tuileries and Chemin des Prunes (a neighboring road) were closed to traffic in order to facilitate the work of investigators, punctuated by the comings and goings of several teams of gendarmerie and firefighters. A tumult, which the village had not experienced since the suicide of Pierre Beregovoy, 31 years ago.
On May 1, 1993, the former Prime Minister of François Mitterrand killed himself at a place called “Pouplier-seul” along the Sermoise-sur-Loire canal. The one and only tragedy that marked the town. Once again shaken by a tragic death, it remains for the village to succeed in revealing its last secrets about the Lina affair, before falling back into oblivion.
