Ingride Jesus Van Der Kellen was sentenced to 30 years of imprisonment with a safety period of 15 years for having killed her two young children in a fit of madness in 2022, Friday by the Meurthe-et-Moselle Assize Court .
This 37-year-old former researcher faced life imprisonment. Devastated, she repeated during the trial that she did not understand how she could have committed such actions and suffocated her two children aged two and a half and nine months. Very psychologically fragile, she has already attempted suicide five times since the start of her incarceration two years ago.
This 37-year-old former researcher, holder of a doctorate in science, faced life imprisonment. She was convicted of murder of minors under the age of 15 and violence against a spouse. She showed no reaction to the verdict.
“I just want to say that I have always loved my children. I love them more than anything. I don’t know why I did such an act.”
Devastated, she repeated during the trial that she wanted to commit suicide, that she did not understand how she could have committed such actions and suffocated her two children aged two and a half and nine months. Very psychologically fragile, she has already attempted suicide five times since the start of her incarceration two years ago.
“I just want to say that I have always loved my children. I love them more than anything. I don’t know why I committed such an act, I don’t understand and I will never understand. I want to once again ask forgiveness from all of my children’s family,” she declared in her last words before the jurors retired to deliberate.
They were a little more lenient than the attorney general, who had requested life imprisonment with a security period of 22 years. “There is a certain form of relief,” the children’s father admitted at the end of the trial. “In the motivations, we talk about an act of revenge on me, that’s what I felt, it feels good to have it recognized.”
“Sentence more lenient than life imprisonment”
“This week was super exhausting, even though I tried to keep my head on my shoulders. Now we’ll have to go back down, I think I’ll have to sleep 12 hours at a time. We talked a lot about the page turning, I don’t know, because the book cannot rewrite itself. To see how I take the next step… It’s sure, it’s complicated, I have to rebuild everything, but it’s possible that I’ll get back on my feet.”
“I find that it is a particularly balanced verdict, it is still an extremely heavy sentence which was pronounced today by the Meurthe-et-Moselle Assize Court. It is a sentence which is in line with the case,” said Me Guillaume Royer, lawyer for the civil parties.
“It is a more lenient sentence than life imprisonment,” noted for his part Me Sahra Amm, who defended the accused. “We have a security period which is 15 years instead of 22. It is certain that it is a much less severe decision than requisitions.”
“Treasing trial”
“This trial was trying, it is the culmination of two and a half years of proceedings,” noted Mr. Amm.
On Thursday, psychiatric experts gave opposing opinions on the accused. One of the psychiatrists believed that his discernment was abolished at the time of the act, which the second expert contested.
In defense, Me Amm had pleaded above all the distress of her client: “Since that day, she has been stuck in a mental pattern” and will never forgive herself for having smothered her children, she explained. “She wants to die. I tell you, she is already moribund,” continued the lawyer, referring to the suicide attempts of the accused. “I’m not a soothsayer but whatever sentence is handed down, I doubt it will come to an end.”
In tears during the debates
On February 15, 2022, the accused was arrested while driving by the gendarmes, when she had just smothered her two children aged nine months and two and a half years, picked up at midday from daycare.
Previously, she had tried to knock out her partner with a hammer, after he had announced his intention to leave the family home with the children due to the mother’s alcoholism.
The accused burst into tears regularly throughout the proceedings. She was unable to complete her interrogation on Wednesday and caregivers had to intervene and administer a sedative.
(afp)
