On October 17, 2022, in Paris, bouquets of flowers were placed in front of the building where young Lola lived and was killed on October 14, 2020. GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT/AFP
From the very beginning, Dahbia Benkired has confounded investigators. There was never any doubt that, on October 14, 2022, she killed 12-year-old Lola, the daughter of the caretakers of the building where her sister lived. Surveillance footage from the residence, located near the Buttes-Chaumont park in Paris's 19th arrondissement, clearly showed Benkired, who was 24 at the time, entering the building at 3:23 pm, together with the child, who had just left school minutes earlier. Several witnesses also saw her trying to transport a trunk, in which Lola's body was later found, just hours after her parents had reported her missing. The body was hidden under a sheet, with her head wrapped in adhesive tape, deep gashes to her throat and the numbers "0" and "1" mysteriously inscribed under her feet.
However, while Benkired clearly raised investigators' suspicions by claiming she believed she had seen a "ghost" in Lola and that it was out of "fear" of this "devil in person" that she had wrapped the girl's head in tape, causing her to asphyxiate, the psychiatric expert who examined her during her preventive detention judged that she could be held responsible for the crime. Unexpectedly, the expert excluded any impairment of her judgment, stating that she did not suffer "from any psychiatric illness that falls under autism, schizophrenia paranoia or others."
