Only days after a 65-year-old French pensioner was beaten to death in his apartment in a Paris suburb, allegedly by an illegal migrant from Algerian, another elderly man, this time aged 88, has died from injuries he sustained while being brutally attacked by two brothers—Mohamed K. and Hichem K.—in the basement of an apartment building in Bezons, a Paris suburb.
The brutal attack, which resulted in the 88-year-old victim suffering multiple severe traumas to his head, along with a broken jaw and injuries to his leg, took place on the night of Monday, December 5th, allegedly carried out by the two brothers, both of whom had criminal records involving drug trafficking and violence, the Paris-based news magazine Valeurs Actuelles reports.
The victim, Jean T., who succumbed to his injuries on December 10th, was discovered by his wife, bloody and unconscious in the apartment building’s basement. Emergency services, after being alerted to the situation, initially believed that his injuries were due to a fall, and police subsequently logged the case as an accident.
The victim’s son, however, was not convinced that what happened was an accident. Not only were the injuries of his father inconsistent with a fall, but his father’s keys and glasses were nowhere to be found when he was discovered clinging to life in the basement. As a result, the concerned son hired a local physician to examine his father’s injuries, and the doctor concurred that the injuries were not consistent with a simple fall down a stairwell.
On top of the doctor’s findings, two additional leads revealed themselves.
First, forensic analysts at the crime scene discovered the victim’s glasses and traces of blood quite far away from where the alleged fall had taken place. Second, the wife of the victim told authorities that on the day of the incident she had seen an unknown man sitting on a throwaway sofa in a separate area of the building that is only several meters away from where her husband’s beaten-up body was found.
“She says she asked this young man if he had seen her husband. But he had answered in the negative before quickly leaving the premises,” said a source close to the case.
Police, after collecting a description of the man on the sofa, quickly identified him as 30-year-old Hichem K., a man with a French passport known to authorities for a lengthy criminal record which includes multiple charges of drug trafficking and violence. During a search of his home, police found shoes soaked in blood, which later, upon being analyzed, was confirmed to be the blood of the victim.
The alleged perpetrator was subsequently taken into police custody on Thursday, December 8th, where during his interrogation he eventually confessed that he had beaten the victim as a consequence of the elderly man commenting on the two brothers’ presence in the apartment building’s basement.
Police, despite suspecting that Hichem’s brother Mohamed also participated in the brutal murder, have yet to charge him with a crime, since he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital following a psychiatric examination ordered after he gave incoherent remarks to police.
According to BFMTV, the mayor of Bezons, Nessrine Menhaouara, denounced the murder as an “act of barbarism.” She described her city as “relatively calm on issues of violence,” but that she had pleaded with Emmanuel Macron and Gérald Darmanin last year for more police resources for the city’s fight against crime and drug trafficking.
