Suspected feminicide near Toulouse: a woman shot dead, her husband seriously injured

A 40-year-old woman was killed near Toulouse and her husband, against whom she had filed a complaint, was found seriously injured by investigators, who have yet to confirm that it was a femicide followed by a suicide attempt, the prosecution said in a press release on Thursday. The autopsy of the victim's body, discovered partly charred Friday morning during the emergency response to a fire in a garage in Launaguet, in the northern suburbs of Toulouse, made it possible to determine that she had been killed by a shot to the head, details the prosecution.

The 54-year-old suspect, found “seriously injured in the head” more than a kilometer from the home, is “still hospitalized in critical condition,” the press release continued. He “had already been convicted by the Assize Court of Guyana, in 2002, for the murder committed in 1999 of an ex-partner,” it is specified. Released from prison in 2010, he had since been convicted again for various traffic offenses and violent theft.

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Ban on going to the couple’s home

His wife had filed a complaint against him on July 25 due to “malicious calls, psychological violence leading to one day of ITT and attacks on privacy, without any mention of physical violence”. A judge had forbidden him from going to the couple's home, meeting the victim or even carrying a weapon, obligations with which he had complied in August, the prosecution said.

On August 5, the Toulouse public prosecutor's office gave his wife a serious danger telephone, which she never activated. Two children, one 17 years old and the other, a nine-year-old girl whom the victim had with the main suspect, were sleeping in the house adjoining the burned garage. An investigation into murder by a spouse in legal recidivism has been opened.