On the Loire-Atlantique Assize Courtroom,
For his eleventh birthday, Jonathan Coulomb requested for a hearth truck. However on this date of April 29, 2004, the little boy was lacking. It was twenty-two years in the past. Nonetheless, the ache appears crystallized for the dad and mom of “little Jonathan”, removed in sea class in Saint-Brévin-les-Pins and located lifeless a month later, bare and encumbered with a concrete block, in a pond in Guérande.
Virginie Lacombe has all the time been current because the opening of the Martin Ney trial, on child criminal German accused of murdering his solely son. A civil occasion, she didn’t want to participate within the debate this Wednesday afternoon. On the sixth day of the listening to, Berrichonne remained together with her eyes fastened on Stéphane Coulom. Current as a father, he isn’t Jonathan’s progenitor however says he has all the time thought-about him his son, his “little man”.
The burden of guilt
For a very long time, the fifty-year-old felt liable for the kid’s dying. In 2004, the couple he shaped with Virginie Lacombe confronted monetary issues. “It was I who insisted that he go on a visit, I took him to the bus that morning,” he confides. It was a final contact a number of days earlier than this well-known telephone name: “I bear in mind the phrases of the schoolmaster, he thought my son had run away. »
Stéphane Coulom by no means believed on this speculation. Following a stranger within the night time? “It’s inconceivable, in accordance with him, Jonathan was afraid of the darkish”, to go to sleep, “he wanted the celebrities” caught to the ceiling of his room. The person remembers the automobile rapidly ready on April 7, 2004, the lengthy hours of journey to succeed in the Loire-Atlantiquescreams and tears from his blended household.
“I’m ready for solutions”
Laeticia Coulom was 11 years previous on the time of the occasions. “Jo’” was “like a twin” from one other mom. “I bear in mind video games of dominoes, coloring competitions and Disney on the couch,” she learn assiduously in court docket. Her speech was not deliberate, “I made a decision an hour in the past,” confides the younger girl, her fingers clenched on a chunk of paper.
From the primary moments of the disappearance, the massive sister was saved knowledgeable of the progress of the investigation, however her dad and mom protected her from probably the most sordid particulars. “Six years in the past, I felt the necessity to learn the file,” she expresses. Final week, she seemed helplessly at photographs of the physique of her deceased little brother. “It’s vital for me to know what occurred, I’m ready for solutions to my questions, for Jonathan to be acknowledged as somebody’s sufferer. »
After these two testimonies, photographs of the “smiling little one with blue eyes” are projected. Martin Ney shows no emotiontrustworthy to his personal impassivity. Above his head, “little Jonathan” seems radiant and surrounded by his household, carried by the current testimonies of his household: “in my childhood hopes, I hoped that he would come again for his birthday. »
