where was the teenager’s body found?

Disappeared on September 23, 2023, young Lina, 15, had not given any sign of life since. On Wednesday October 16, 2024, the Strasbourg public prosecutor announced that the body of the young girl was found “in a wooded and isolated area in the Nevers region”. The body was apparently discovered while it was “immersed in a watercourse below an embankment”, we learned this evening. As the prosecutor’s press release specifies, genetic analyzes were carried out urgently by the IRCGN. They made it possible to confirm that it is indeed the remains of the teenager who had been seen alive for the last time on the path which connects the family home in Plaine, in Bas-Rhin, to the train station. Saint-Blaise-la-Roche. On the day of her disappearance, the teenager had to take the train to meet her boyfriend in Strasbourg for a day of shopping.

For more than a year now, investigators have continued their work in the hope of finding the young woman alive. A suspect was identified in this case, a certain Samuel Gonin, 43 years old. Originally from Doubs and in social and family breakdown, the man finally committed suicide on July 10. “The Ford Puma vehicle used by Samuel Gonin had been geolocated at this location on September 24, 2023, the day after Lina’s disappearance,” reveals the prosecutor this evening.

It was therefore thanks to the geolocation of the main suspect’s vehicle that investigators were finally able to find the body of the teenager. On July 26, the deputy public prosecutor of Strasbourg revealed that Lina’s handbag had been discovered in the glove box of a geolocated car not far from the place of her disappearance on D-Day, and that the young woman’s DNA had also been found in the trunk of the same vehicle.