What happened on this Eure road? The gendarmes launched a call for witnesses on Wednesday, November 16 with the aim of identifying the victim of a homicide committed eight months ago. On Twitter, it is specified that the Rouen Research Section is interested in the identity of a woman “between 40 and 60 years old, carrying a backpack and traveling on a bicycle that can be equipped with panniers”.
She was hit by a vehicle on March 9, 2022 north of Evreux by a motorist driving in a black Audi A4 registered in Poland. “The victim has still not been identified, his body has not been found”, adds the gendarmerie in its message, specifying that anyone holding “elements on the course of the facts or likely to allow the identification of the victim” can contact the Research Section by phone or email, at the number and address listed in the tweet below.
If the facts took place in March, the gendarmes only became aware of them last May, explains BFMTV. More precisely on May 14, when a woman went to the Dieppe gendarmerie to denounce a murder allegedly committed by her ex-companion, a 46-year-old carpenter.
Speaking to the press on Wednesday November 16, the public prosecutor of Evreux Rémi Coutin clarified that this man called his ex-girlfriend on March 9, explaining to her that he had just had an accident on the road. . He then called her back to tell her that the cyclist hit was in good health, but “the same day, one of her friends had contacted her to tell her that she had just passed by the home of her ex-companion and that she had taken two pictures of the windshield of the Audi vehicle of it”. In these photos, we can see “a large circular impact with a red mark in the center”, specifies the public prosecutor. Going there the next day, the ex-girlfriend of this man also distinguishes traces of blood on one side of the car.
She finally questions the forties, who explains to her that he hit a cyclist “who looked like a tramp” while he was drunk at the wheel. He would then have loaded the body and the bicycle into his car to bury her and, noting that she was still alive, he would have killed her “by carrying several blows of the shovel”, specifies the prosecutor. Believing in the story of this former companion, the police opened an investigation, also justified by the testimony of another woman who allegedly had a brief affair with the suspect. He would have told him that he was “not well in his head because he had knocked down an old lady while he was driving his car and that he had finished her before burying her”. Car that was found burnt by the gendarmes…
The 46-year-old man was taken into police custody on June 21 and explained that he wanted to make “a joke” to his former companion, according to the public prosecutor. He allegedly damaged his car himself and poured ketchup into it, as well as chicken blood. He finally changes version after seeing the photos, acknowledging that he burned his car himself. He is then indicted for murder, concealment of a corpse, destruction of evidence and false denunciation to the judicial authority. Placed in pre-trial detention, he changed his version again on November 10 during an interrogation, returning to his idea of a “joke” for his companion.
Eight months after the accident, the gendarmes did not find any body. Above all, they do not know who this victim could be, since no disappearance has been reported in the Eure or in the neighboring departments. The report made to Europole did not give anything either. According to the gendarmes, it could be a person who lived alone, isolated from his neighbors and relatives, or a person who was in transit in the department in March.