DEATH OF ROSE. The 15-year-old teenager, the main suspect in the case of little Rose, found dead on April 25, confessed to being responsible for her death on Wednesday.
The teenager suspected of having killed little Rose, in Rambervillers, in the Vosges, on April 25, admitted this Wednesday, June 21 to be the cause of his death.
Investigators and magistrates led the 15-year-old young man to the town this morning, for a reconstruction, as reported by BFMTV. He confessed to drowning the girl in the bathtub in his apartment, where her body was found. According to his version of the facts, the teenager would have invited the girl to come and see his cats. He told the investigating judge that he had wanted to “scare the child”. He said he ran a bath and drowned the girl in the bathroom tub. The teenager indicted since the end of April, will certainly be returned to pre-trial detention.
Learn more about the Rose case
Since Tuesday April 25, the death of a 5-year-old girl has shaken the small town of Rambervillers and its 5,000 inhabitants, in the Vosges. That day, parents alerted the police to the disappearance of their child, a 5-year-old girl named Rose. The girl will be found dead a few hours later. His lifeless body had been discovered naked and in a plastic bag by the police. The bag was for its part in an apartment located not far from the girl’s home. At the origin of this discovery: a 15-year-old teenager, who has since become the main suspect in this case.
The young man had indeed reported the discovery of Rose’s body in front of his home to the police, but it was inside his mother’s apartment that the body was finally found. These elements, coupled with the criminal history of the teenager, indicted in February 2022 for two sexual assaults on children aged 10 and 11, had raised fears of sexual violence perpetrated on the girl. The findings of the autopsy performed on Friday, April 28 ultimately indicated that Rose was not raped.
The 15-year-old teenager had been indicted for the charge of murdering a minor under the age of 15 and placed in pre-trial detention in the Metz remand center on April 27. He faces up to 20 years in prison because of his age. Last year, the young man was sent to a closed educational center for a year. He was released last March after serving his sentence. Since his release, and his return to Rambervillers, he was subject to an obligation of care and training, under the supervision of the Judicial Protection of Youth (PJJ). “The law was respected. He was placed in a closed educational center for the maximum duration, that which is provided for by law because he was under 16 at the time of the facts with which he is accused. from a legal point of view, this child could not be in prison”, said Charlotte Caubel, Secretary of State for Children, on BFM-TV.
A difficult family situation
“Reappeared a few weeks ago downtown [de Rambervilliers, ndlr] where he wandered by bike”, according to the mayor of the town Jean-Pierre Michel, the teenager was well known to the inhabitants. Since his childhood, the suspect in the death of little Rose crisscrossed the streets of the locality on his regular bike to be “all alone in the street since childhood” according to a relative of the family who testified to BFM TV. If the teenager has never had any friends, according to the memories of an educator interviewed by The Parisian, he also did not benefit from support within his family: as a child he received blows from his biological father according to the aforementioned relative, and when older he often remained alone despite the presence of his mother, deficient mental and volatile, and of her stepfather caught up in work seven days a week.
This family climate can partly explain the conclusions drawn by the psychiatrists who detected a slight mental deficiency, self-centered functioning and psycho-emotional immaturity during a previous expertise.
Suspect found disabled
The teenager suspected of having killed Rose has had a ‘disorder since childhood’ according to an unnamed relative and has been recognized as disabled due to mild mental retardation according to The Parisian. At school, the suspect therefore benefited from appropriate education before being directed to a medico-educational institute. A companion who took care of him describes a child who expresses himself little and badly and who tries to be “interesting” to counter loneliness. It is also because of his behavior and possible psychiatric disorders that “the municipal police had [pourtant] a watchful eye on him”, said the mayor of Rambervillers. However, the public prosecutor of Epinal, in charge of the case, indicated that “a psychiatric expertise previously ordered concluded that there were no mental disorders” but to “the existence of an alteration of discernment and its dangerousness for others.”
Criminal history
This isn’t the first time the teenage suspect in Rose’s death has been embroiled in a court case. The 15-year-old had already been indicted and then placed under judicial supervision after the sexual assault of two children aged 10 and 11 in February 2022. The case had taken him to a closed educational center in the Vosges, structure from which he was released in February 2023, after serving his sentence.
The mother of one of the young boys who accuse the suspect returned, Friday, April 28, to the microphone of BFM TV, on the aggression of her son. “They were outside playing, like all children. [Le suspect] called them, told them to come and show them something”, she recalled, explaining that the suspect would then have taken them to the forest where he would then have “tied them with tape”. And to add : “With his lighter, he wanted to light the leaves so that they would burn.” Fortunately, “another child [les] saved. They managed to escape”, she reported. And to estimate: “[Sans lui]there might have been two more deaths.”
It should be noted that before his departure and since his return to Rambervillers, the teenager had also got into the habit of calling out to certain young girls according to the testimonies of members of the neighborhood. The teenager offered them, according to the same words, to go see his cat in his mother’s apartment, where Rose’s body was found.