A suspect arrested in connection with the death of an 11-year-old girl in France had wanted to rob the child, but panicked when she started screaming, the Office of the Public Prosecutor of Évry said on Wednesday.
The girl, Louise, was found dead in a forest in Essonne Department, south of Paris, during the night from Friday to Saturday. She had been stabbed on Friday after disappearing while leaving school.
The prosecutor's office said on Wednesday that it had ordered the suspect's pre-trial detention.
The young man had already approached a schoolgirl in the same area on 4 February. He had intended to rob someone so as to calm down after an online argument over a video game, but he panicked when Louise started shouting, Prosecutor Grégoire Dulin explained at a press conference.
The 23-year-old suspect's girlfriend will also have to appear before the investigating judge on suspicion of failing to report a crime. The prosecution asks that she be placed under judicial supervision.
The parents of the suspect, who were also arrested for failing to report a crime, were released on Wednesday after their interrogation, prosecutor Dulin said.
He specified that the main suspect, who was arrested on Monday, had made confessions on Tuesday afternoon, after previous denials. "He told investigators that after an argument online with a player, he was very angry and left the house, dressed in his black down jacket that usually contained an Opinel knife,’ the prosecutor said. ‘He intended to rob or extort someone to calm down.’
The young man said he crossed Louise in the afternoon and decided to pursue her. He lured her into the forest at Longjumeau on the pretext that he had lost something.
"There he threatened her with the knife, saying he would go through her belongings to steal money from her," Dulin recalled. "When he wanted to search her bag, she started shouting. Panicked by the screams, he threw her to the ground and stabbed her several times with the knife."
The young man, a computer science student, "spends most of his free time playing video games and acknowledges that he can have temper tantrums, which his entourage confirms," according to the prosecutor. His 19-year-old sister said he was "violent, nervous and aggressive."
