Trial at the Sedan assizes: a man tried for the murder and rape of little Loana in 2023

The assize trial of a man accused of having raped and killed Loana, in 2023 in Sedan, opens this Monday before the Ardennes Assize Court. Twenty-four hours after her disappearance, the 10-year-old girl was found dead in the cellar of a small building in the city center, made up of an abandoned bar and an apartment upstairs.

The inhabitant of this accommodation, Jean-Baptiste M., aged around fifty, was quickly arrested, indicted and placed in pre-trial detention. He admitted to investigators that he had raped the girl, but not to having killed her. He had claimed that she had accidentally fallen to her death on the stairs, the Reims public prosecutor, François Schneider, reported at the time.

Blood everywhere

But according to the autopsy, the girl was hit numerous times in the face and these blows led to her death. Investigators found blood “in the bar”, “in the cellar” as well as in the apartment, “on the bed sheets”.

The accused, an alcoholic and unemployed, divorced and father of six children, knew Loana's family, who herself lived "in a certain precariousness". He was already known to the courts for traffic offenses and a case of gang theft, but not for acts of violence or sexual violence.

His trial is scheduled to last until Wednesday in Charleville-Mézières. He faces life imprisonment with a maximum security period of thirty years.