Ten days after the discovery of the lifeless body of Emilio, 14, in the family home in Alénya (Pyrénées-Orientales), the teenager's stepfather, a 42-year-old man, was indicted for “murder of a 15-year-old minor” and placed in pre-trial detention on Thursday October 31, Perpignan deputy public prosecutor Nicolas Brignol told AFP this Friday November 1.
Emilio's mother was also indicted for “murder of a 15-year-old minor”, Monday October 28, and imprisoned. The couple was arrested last week in Val-d'Oise where they had fled.
Presented to the investigating judge late Thursday afternoon, the teenager's stepfather “remained silent (…) during his interrogation,” said Nicolas Brignol. The forty-year-old, “already convicted of violence and offenses against drug legislation”, had been “hospitalized following drug absorption before the arrival of investigators”, the prosecutor indicated last week.
For her part, the mother, “never convicted”, had been “placed in police custody in Argenteuil” before being brought back to the Pyrénées-Orientales. She was a childminder in the neighboring town of Saint-Cyprien, by the sea, also in the Pyrénées-Orientales. The family was “known for procedures linked to a conflictual separation of the parental couple”, the prosecution also affirmed.
The case began with the revelations of a friend of the father-in-law, who came to the Argenteuil police station to report that the 42-year-old man had confided to him “having smoked his stepson.” Emilio's body was discovered on the night of October 23 to 24 by the gendarmes, the day after the arrest of his stepfather and his mother in Val-d'Oise. The autopsy carried out on Monday at the Montpellier University Hospital confirmed that a multitude of violent blows were inflicted on the victim's entire body.
