No criminal record, a woman he met in high school, and a plumbing license. “But he didn't work, she was the one who fed the family,” say the neighbors who gathered yesterday to place flowers among the Christmas decorations at the gate of the small residential complex where the Christmas massacre took place in Meaux, 60,000 people Residents a few kilometers east of Paris.
Including shock and amazement. “I can’t explain his actions. “He's someone who lives in his own bubble, he hasn't spoken to anyone,” reacts the neighbor, who was waiting for him at home with his wife and children to celebrate the evening before. Nevertheless, they knew about the mental disorders of the 33-year-old, who originally comes from the Paris suburb of Colombes: since 2017 he was known for domestic violence and severe depressive and psychotic disorders. This year he threatened to stab his partner and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. He also attempted suicide in 2017. Two years later, he is said to have struck the woman in the shoulder blade with a knife: it was November 14, 2019, a month and a half before the birth of her third child.
Taken into custody, she said that he loved her and had no intention of harming her: “The stab wound started by itself,” he told investigators seriously. And he was again admitted to a psychiatric ward, the case was dismissed due to inability to understand and want.
The reason why his criminal record remains unblemished is because his partner always refused to press charges. At the hearing in November 2019, he “mentioned a long-term depressive state in his partner, who, according to him, had long since stopped treatment” and explained that he had only received “a slap in the face”.
The couple had been together for 14 years and had known each other since high school. They had grown up together, a likely “toxic” relationship that prevented the 35-year-old, originally from Haiti, from understanding the gravity of the risk she and her children took every day living next to him. Not only did she not distance herself from him, but she married him “in October 2023,” who knows, perhaps in the hope that she could gain more emotional stability by strengthening the connection.
What exactly triggered his murderous rage is still unclear, prosecutor Jean-Baptiste Bladier stated yesterday in the first press conference on the case. Of course, Christmas, which increases every state of mind, every suffering and every instability, certainly did not help to avoid this.
He had not yet been interrogated, but – after an escape for several hours – admitted when he was arrested that he had committed the massacre: “I know why you are stopping me, I attacked my family,” he told the police officers who arrested him clearly and clearly . 50,000 residents from 50 nationalities were hunted at his father's home in Sevran, the heart of the Paris suburbs' fury for years. “But this time immigrants have nothing to do with it, he is French like us,” observe some on social media.
Now the young man faces a life sentence. But his psychiatric profile could indicate a change or lack of judgment. In the first case, the expected sentence would be 30 years. In the other case, “a way to order security measures” will be shown, predicted the prosecutor of Meaux.