A photo of Inès Mecellem, 25, who was stabbed to death by her ex-partner, displayed on a mobile phone, on September 17, 2025. AXELLE DE RUSSÉ FOR LE MONDE
She had wanted someone to come and clean the brownish stains that dotted the landing and the exterior wall of her home. She could no longer bear to see them every time she crossed her threshold, but she could not bring herself to do it alone. Since September 8, every time night fell, she felt she could not stay still: She needed to be somewhere else, anywhere but there, in the house where, that day, she had heard a heart-wrenching scream. She had immediately told her daughter to call the police, and then pounded on the door of her neighbor, Inès Mecellem, the kind and discreet 25-year-old social worker who lived on the other side of her wall. She heard scraping noises and moans. She knocked even harder on the glass door: "Are you okay, Inès? Inès, open up!" A man finally came out, holding a knife in his hand. He shoved her aside and fled down the street below.
Mecellem was lying on the floor, still conscious, lying in a pool of blood. "There was so much of it, I didn't know what to do, I didn't dare touch her wounds," she said, almost apologizing, all while nervously fiddling with the ring on her index finger, her eyes brimming with tears. The neighbor shouted to her daughter that they needed an ambulance, quickly, and that it was serious. Mecellem's breathing was growing heavy, and she was slipping away. The neighbor held her hand and tried to keep her conscious. "It's okay, Inès, it's going to be all right, the emergency services are coming." The police arrived first, then an emergency medical team. They fought to save her, gave her a blood transfusion and did everything to bring her back. "6:15 pm," said an emergency worker, on September 8: The time of Mecellem's death, after she was killed by Habib, her ex-partner, whom she had left a few months earlier and against whom she had filed five complaints in six weeks at a police station in the western French city of Poitiers.
