Valentin, the 15-year-old teenager arrested on Saturday, December 2, following the discovery of two bodies in a burned house in Châteauvilain in Isère, was “indicted for murder” after confessing, announced, Monday December 4, the Grenoble public prosecutor’s office.
“As he had done before the gendarmes, [Valentin] again admitted the facts before the [investigating] judge, including the premeditation of his action. He has just been placed in pre-trial detention by the judge of freedoms and detention,” said the public prosecutor Eric Vaillant in a press release.
At the heart of suspicion since the discovery of the bodies (presumably his parents, according to the prosecution), the teenager was incarcerated in a juvenile section of a detention center. He was also indicted for the destruction by fire of the family home located in the small village of Châteauvilain, between Grenoble and Lyon.
Arrested in Montpellier
The investigating judge will also “order a psychiatric assessment and a psychological assessment to better understand the personality of the accused and assess his criminal responsibility”, specifies the prosecutor.
Born in 2008 and the youngest son of a family of four described as “normal, uneventful” and very well integrated into his village, Valentin was arrested on Saturday in Montpellier and placed in police custody as part of the investigation for “assassination” opened by the Grenoble public prosecutor’s office. Brought back to Isère on Saturday, he immediately “confessed to the gendarmes to being the author of the murder of his parents”, according to the prosecution.
Valentin had vanished after the fire which ravaged his family’s renovated farm in Châteauvilain, a village of nearly 800 inhabitants, during the night from Sunday to Monday.
In the rubble, two “almost completely charred” bodies were found, according to investigators. They had “gunshot wounds to the skull” and to the thorax for one of them.
Expertise was launched for their formal identification and a judicial investigation into assassinations and destruction by fire was opened on Friday.