Femicide: A man in police custody after the murder of his ex-partner in Charleville-Mézières

According to the Ardennes public prosecutor's office, a forty-year-old was placed in police custody after the discovery, Friday evening, of the lifeless body of his ex-partner in a building in Charleville-Mézières. A flagrant judicial investigation was opened “on the grounds of intentional homicide by an ex-spouse” after the discovery on Friday around 11 p.m. of the body of this woman born in 1970, said the public prosecutor in Charleville-Mézières, Magali Josse, in a press release.

According to a police source, the victim's ex-companion himself called emergency services in the evening and confessed to having killed her earlier in the afternoon when she came to collect some things. Still according to this source, the body of the victim, fatally strangled, was found in the cellar of the accommodation.

“The first hearings, medico-legal and material findings, point the origin of this death to the criminal trail,” added the prosecution, specifying that an autopsy had to be carried out in order to establish the causes of death. The man, born in 1982 and with no criminal record, was arrested and immediately taken into police custody. According to the police source, this man, under guardianship, was not drunk at the time of the discovery of the body.

In 2025, 111 women were killed by their spouse or ex-spouse in France, a figure up 4% over one year, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior.