A 24-year-old homeless woman in Paris has been charged with the murder, rape, and torture of a young schoolgirl, 12, who was found stuffed in a suitcase last week.
Lola Daviet was reported missing by her parents at around 4 p.m. last Friday, when she never made it home from her school, just down the block from her home.
“Lola knows that on Fridays you go straight home because we go to Béthune, the family village, a three-hour drive north of Paris,” Lola's mother, Delphine, said, according to the Mirror.
Surveillance footage obtained from the area shows the alleged attacker and Lola near the building where she lived with her parents. In the video footage, the young girl is still holding her schoolbags, according to the Evening Standard.
Lola's father, a caretaker for the building, decided to check the video footage for his building when Lola never appeared after school.
He saw his daughter entering the building with a stranger.
Delphine wrote on Facebook that Lola was “last seen in the company of a girl we don’t know, in our residence.”
The search came to a devastating end when the young girl's mutilated body was found stuffed in luggage on the street.
It was discovered several blocks away from the family's residence by a homeless man around 11 p.m. on Friday.
Her hands and feet had been bound with tape, and her throat slashed. She was found gagged and with the numbers 1 and 0 placed on her chest.
Local witnesses told police and reporters that they saw the suspect enter the building alone, then she later “came out, half an hour later with a large, very heavy suitcase.”
One witness told the media that the woman "asked everyone she met to help her carry it. She seemed a little crazy," they added.
"At one point she left the suitcase in front of a cafe, she came and went, went in and out, we wondered what was inside her but we would never have thought of a body," they said.
According to the witness, the suspect allegedly walked around in public for a significant amount of time with the suitcase. “She went to the bakery in front of the cafe to buy a croissant, she came back like it was nothing, she looked a little unsteady,” they noted.
Law enforcement officials in Paris stated there is evidence to suggest that Lola was raped, tortured, strangled, and killed in the basement of the building where she lived.
According to a post-mortem exam, Lola reportedly died of asphyxiation. A local news outlet, BFMTV, reported that the numbers 1 and 0 were "placed" on her body.
Authorities are working to determine if there is any significance to what the numbers may mean.
The suspect, a 24-year-old homeless woman named Dahbia, was arrested on Saturday.
According to the outlet, Dahbia “is believed to suffer from serious psychological problems. She was living on the street, but had friends and family in the Paris area.”
She was found at her sister's home in a northern suburb of Bois-Colombes.
BFMTV reported that a man in his 40s was also arrested in connection to the murder. He was suspected to have possibly helped the alleged killer carry the young girl’s body.
