Eva Deschamps / October 30, 2022
The lifeless body of a 12-year-old autistic child, reported missing on Friday, was found Saturday by his family in Marseille, on the banks of the river Huveaune, bearing "knife wounds", announced the prosecutor's office to AFP in late afternoon.
The mother of the child was placed in custody, taking into account the findings of the technical and scientific police in the family apartment", said barely two hours later the prosecutor of the Republic of Marseille Dominique Laurens, still to AFP.
The child, autistic according to his aunt and uncle who spoke to AFP on the spot in the afternoon, in the popular district of Capelette, would have escaped the surveillance of his mother Friday, around 16:00, during a walk.
According to Ms. Laurens, the mother would have reported the disappearance of her child Friday.
The child's aunt and uncle told AFP that the family had notified the police station around 5:00 pm, then again around 10:00 pm, their search still being unsuccessful.
The body was discovered by the father and the uncle of the child, insisted Mrs Laurens, specifying that the investigation had been entrusted to the judicial police.
The family told AFP that they had first found the child's jacket on Saturday morning around 8:30 am, on the banks of the Huveaune, before finally finding the body around 1:00 pm, still on the banks of the river, about a hundred meters away, at the bottom of a steep slope overlooking the water, in tall grass and brush.
The corpse has "wounds with a knife", said the prosecutor to AFP, also speaking of "many traces of blood on the path of the discovery of the body.
On images taken by the uncle with his cell phone, that AFP was able to see, the child, dressed, is in a side position, face turned towards the brush, blood on an arm and on the stomach. Still according to the uncle, the marine firefighters would have advised the family to move away, as the child's face was "damaged".
"We went to the police immediately," repeated the aunt Saturday to AFP: "When it is an autistic child like him, we do not let the parents leave like that, we find a patrol to go looking," she continued.
If they had come earlier... After, I do not know what that would have changed", she added, visibly angry. Informed a few moments later of the placement in custody of the mother, the aunt immediately burst into tears.
According to her, the mother was taking care "full time" of her son, her only child, and did not have a profession: "I had tried to help her to be accompanied by specialized institutions but it had failed, and this child had to miss the supervision which he would have needed", she explained.