Murder of Sihem: in Salles-du-Gardon, residents still in shock

Almost 2 years after the murder of Sihem, a reenactment was organized this Monday, November 18, in La Grand-Combe. It took place at the home of a certain Mahfoud H., in the La Levade district. The investigating judges asked him to return to this night of January 25 to 26, 2023 where he is suspected of having killed the young woman aged 18. The suspect then left his body in the town of Salles-du-Gardon, in a very wooded area, where barely twenty residents live. And this reconstruction awakened a trauma in them.

A very isolated place

When Gisèle heard, this Monday morning, the sirens of the gendarmes who were transporting the suspect for reconstitution, her blood ran cold; like the day she learned that Sihem had been found near her home: “It fuels a bit of a feeling of insecurityshe confides. I've lived here for a long time and I never imagined it could happen here.”. Gisèle then points out this route that the alleged murderer took to get rid of the body. A road that flattens her house where she lives with Pierre, her husband: “That someone passed there with a body in a car, frankly… it's surprising. In a big city, strictly speaking, but here… it was unimaginable!” Pierre identified the area where the young woman was found lifeless: “Yes, it's between the hamlet of Pallières and the place called La Croix des Vents, on a plateau… but since the crime, I haven't gone back.”

“Those I know haven’t gone back”

This plateau is precisely a few hundred meters from Georges' doorstep, who cannot help but look at it while thinking of Sihem's family: “It does somethinghe said, squeezing the throat. It hurts me because I know his parents who I sometimes meet at the La Grand-Combe market on Saturdays. It shows, they are marked.” He too is “marked” by the death of the young woman. This hunting enthusiast was never able to return to snoop in the area where Sihem's remains were abandoned. “No, I can’t,” he confides. “But I’m not the only one. The other shoe makers I know haven’t gone back there either.”