Sandra had been beaten to death in 2015, when the police and those around her were alerted to the violence of her companion: the Assize Court of Douai (North) began Tuesday to try this thirty-something for rape and murder. “It was I who struck the blows,” admitted Hocine Hamoudi, 35, at the start of the trial, while denying that he wanted to kill his partner Sandra (whose surname is hidden to protect his children). This mother of four children from a first union, died at her home in Hazebrouck (North), at the age of 41, on May 1, 2015, “demolished, shattered”, according to the family lawyer, Me Blandine Lejeune.
The autopsy will identify 20 invoices and 143 lesions, some of which “suggestive of sexual violence”. Warned by a son of the victim, the police had discovered his home devastated by the violence. The young man had earlier in the day, when the violence had already started, tried to convince his mother to go to the hospital, but she refused. Hocine Hamoudi, who denies the rape, was already the subject of several alerts for domestic violence. At least two ex-girlfriends had filed a complaint for violence in 2009 and 2013.
“She tried to leave him, but he never let her go”
Sandra had herself filed a complaint a year before the facts, in June 2014, after being hospitalized for punches and screwdrivers. She then told the police that her boyfriend was forcing her into prostitution, before withdrawing her complaint. She then filed handrails, and the police intervened three times in 2015 to remove the accused from his home. Her mother and her sisters were also aware of the hold that her companion exercised over her and the violence she suffered. Sandra had asked a neighbor to call the police if she heard “too much noise”.
“She tried to leave him, but he never let her go, harassed her, threatened her relatives. She came back out of fear”, pointed out Me Blandine Lejeune for AFP. The lawyer deplored a series of “dysfunctions” in the follow-up of the couple, regretting that once the complaint was withdrawn, “there is no appearance or judicial review”. The trial is scheduled to last until Friday.