A 48-year-old man was taken into police custody on Tuesday April 12 in Rennes after telling the police that he had strangled his wife, who was found dead in their apartment, the prosecution announced. The lifeless body of the victim, aged 45, of Congolese nationality like her husband, was found at her home on Tuesday morning.
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The man, who has already served a prison sentence for domestic violence, went to a local police station in the morning where he said he strangled his wife. He was immediately taken into custody, the prosecution said in a statement. Under the influence of alcohol, the suspect could not be heard by investigators late Tuesday afternoon. The couple’s two little girls, aged eight and nine, were present at the scene and had to be placed in hospital for observation.
An investigation for murder by spouse was entrusted to the Departmental Security. In 2019, the husband was sentenced to a year and a half in prison, including eight months suspended, for acts of violence with a weapon on his partner. The man had served his sentence in the Rennes penitentiary center from December 2019 to July 2020 and he had since been followed “as part of the probationary period which was to end on July 8, 2022“, specifies the parquet floor.
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No complaint from the victim has been recorded since his conviction, notes the prosecution. In 2013, a first complaint by the wife for violence by a spouse was dismissed. Three years later, it was the husband who filed a complaint against his wife for violence, a procedure also dismissed for lack of sufficient evidence. The couple married in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2012 before moving to France. According to the latest report from the Ministry of the Interior, 102 women were killed by their spouses or ex-spouses in 2020.
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