On November 26, 2016, little Tony, three years old, died under the blows of his stepfather. The latter appears from Tuesday before the assizes of the Marne, in a trial where the responsibility of the mother will also be debated.
Accused of "violence resulting in death without intention to give it to a 15 year old minor by a person having authority", Loïc Vantal, 24 years old at the time of the events, faces life imprisonment.
Verdict expected Friday evening
Placed under judicial control, his ex-partner, Caroline Letoile, Tony's mother, is being prosecuted for failing to assist a person in danger and risks five years of imprisonment. The verdict is expected Friday evening.
This day in November 2016, around 3.30 p.m., the Reims firefighters respond to the call of a 19-year-old mother to rescue her son who, according to her, has lost consciousness following a fall.
Rescuers then note that the child, in a "particularly serious condition", presents "many bruises on the body", as the public prosecutor Matthieu Bourrette will indicate in a press conference held two days after the tragedy. Shortly after 5 p.m., Tony dies on his arrival at the pediatric emergencies of the Reims University Hospital, where a doctor notices traces of punches in the stomach.
The autopsy shows that the death of the child is due to a bursting of the spleen and pancreas dating from 48 hours. The report also reports numerous traumatic injuries to the young victim's face and body, as well as several rib fractures, both old and recent.
Man already convicted seven times for acts of violence
While in police custody, the mother, "collapsed" according to the prosecutor, had first tried to minimize the facts before admitting that her companion with whom she had been living for three months beat her son, who served as a "scapegoat" ".
Convicted seven times for acts of violence, his spouse finally recognized violence against the child after several denials. The investigation will reveal that the insults, slaps and punches started when she arrived in the mother's apartment in September 2016, with a dramatic intensification of physical violence the week before the child's death.
"We need to understand why Tony was not protected from the real tortures he suffered, why no one reacted," says Martine Brousse, president of "The Voice of the Child", civil party with four others child protection associations.
Because the family and deadly three months in camera that was fatal to Tony did not take place without witnesses. The judges will not fail to question the silence of the first of them: the mother.
"Why did nobody react?"
Presented by the experts as immature and under the influence of her companion, she never denounced the blows, despite the many questions and concerns that very regularly expressed by her relatives as well as Tony's father and paternal grandmother, parties civil.
"Anxious and worried, they are mostly waiting for explanations and answers," say their lawyer, Olivier Chalot, surprised that Tony's father is summoned to the hearing as a witness even though he is a civil party in the case.
From the start, the lack of reaction from the couple's neighbors was also pointed out by prosecutor Bourrette. "If the police had been alerted by the neighborhood, this child could have spent Christmas 2016," he said.
In October 2019, the closest neighbor had been sent back for failure to report ill-treatment to the Reims Criminal Court, which had acquitted him. "Everyone in the building, at one point, heard Tony cry," said the presiding judge.
Justice
Death of little Tony in Reims: A man tried this Tuesday for not having denounced his violent neighbor
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