The 15-year-old, suspected of having killed his little sister and seriously injured his little brother in Moernach, finally confessed. His lawyers requested a psychiatric expertise.
He ended up confessing. In police custody since Tuesday evening, a teenager from Moernach, whose 11-year-old younger sister was murdered, finally confessed to being the perpetrator. He also reportedly seriously injured his 8-year-old brother. The latter survived but his condition remains critical.
Inconsistent comments
The 15-year-old was alone with his little sister and his little brother, in the family house in this Haut-Rhin village, when the latter alerted one of his neighbors at around 7 p.m. He told her that a prowler had entered the house. “He was trembling, felt himself being pursued, he saw a black shadow,” the neighbor in question testified on RTL. Questioned by the police the day after the tragedy, the older brother repeated the prowler’s version. But investigators did not believe his story, which they deemed “laconic and confusing.” The young man appeared before a judge this Thursday afternoon. He asked for a psychiatric expertise.
Possible schizophrenia
What could have caused the teenager to commit such an act of violence? If it is indeed a mental illness, the psychiatrist Roland Coutanceau, psychiatrist and expert at the Court of Cassation, sees only one possible diagnosis: schizophrenia. “This crime could correspond to a classic case of entry into schizophrenia. The disease can manifest itself in a terrible bout of violence despite the total absence of warning signs, ”explains the specialist in victimology.
This is not the first time that such a drama has occurred in France: in 2009, a young man aged 16 killed his parents and his two brothers with a shotgun. The teenager, who had complained of nocturnal anxiety a month earlier, was judged “irresponsible for a mental disorder which abolished discernment at the time of acts. The psychological assessment of the teenager from Moernach could lead to a similar result, assuming the boy suffers from aggravated schizophrenia. If it is lighter, the boy could be held responsible for his actions, because partially lucid at the time of the facts.
Listen to Dr Roland Coutanceau, psychiatrist specializing in victimology and expert at the Court of Cassation: “SIf the boy suffers from a mental illness, one must first assess the intensity of this illness in order to judge the responsibility for his actions. “
Schizophrenia is a serious, chronic medical disorder that disrupts the message transmission system in the brain. If its causes remain unknown, we know that it alters the ability to act in a lucid manner. Gradually, it leads to a loss of sense of reality. This psychosis affects about 1% of the world’s population, and may first appear in childhood, but it occurs mostly in the late teens or twenties.
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