Week 42 continues to haunt the collective memory. Every year, between October 10 and 20, a tragedy is inscribed in it, like a tragic event. After Samuel Paty in 2020 and Dominique Bernard in 2023, the memory of little Lola returns, three years after her murder in Paris. On October 17, the Assize Court opens the trial of Dahbia Benkired, 27, accused of killing and mutilating the twelve-year-old child in conditions of unprecedented violence. On October 14, 2022, Lola Daviet disappears while leaving the Georges-Brassens middle school in the 19th arrondissement. Barely two minutes separated the school from the lodge where her parents, building caretakers, lived. That day, her mother was packing her suitcases for the weekend on the Opal Coast. But the teenager did not come home. Concern mounted, then panic. The parents searched the residence, notified the police, and analyzed CCTV footage. At 15:20 p.m., the girl appeared, preceded by an unknown woman. After that, nothing. A few hours later, her body was found in a plastic trunk, hidden in the building's inner courtyard. The little girl had been raped, tortured, and then suffocated under duct tape.
A crime of unspeakable savagery
The prime suspect, Dahbia Benkired, was arrested the next day. An Algerian who arrived in France in 2016 with a student residence permit, she was subject to an obligation to leave the country (OQTF) that remained unfulfilled. This detail, which has become a symbol of a powerless state, has fueled political controversy over immigration and deportations for two years. The investigation revealed that Benkired, unemployed and living precariously with her sister in the same building as the Daviets, had dragged Lola home with her before committing the irreparable. After the crime, she carried the child's body around in a trunk, wandered the streets with her luggage, before abandoning everything in the courtyard. The police located her a few hours later in Bois-Colombes. In police custody, her statements were incoherent. She spoke of a "ghost," of vague revenge for a refused badge. Dahbia Benkired, who lost her parents shortly before the incident, appears unstable. According to her relatives, she had been delusional since her mother's death. Transferred to a psychiatric unit after experiencing crises while in detention, she was nevertheless declared criminally responsible. Three psychiatric assessments concluded that she had no major pathology. The experts suggested a narcissistic personality and psychopathic traits. When shown photos of Lola's body, she reacted unemotionally: "It doesn't bother me," she reportedly told investigators.
A broken family, a stunned society
For Lola's parents, life stopped that day. Delphine, her mother, never returned to her job as a caretaker. Her father, Johan, died in February 2024, struck down by a heart attack after months of drinking and distress. The couple, united for twenty years, did not survive the loss of their daughter. "Everything was shattered," confides the mother, now supported by her son Thibault, now the sole pillar of the family. Beyond the family tragedy, the Lola case has shocked public opinion, rekindling tensions surrounding border control, justice, and security. The issue of monitoring obligations to leave the country has returned to the heart of the political debate, transforming this individual crime into a national symbol. The trial of Dahbia Benkired, which will run from October 17 to 24 in Paris, must attempt to understand the incomprehensible. Tried for "murder and rape with barbaric acts against a minor under the age of 15," she faces life imprisonment. In the courtroom, Delphine and Thibault await answers that no sentence can truly provide. France, for its part, holds its breath as this new face-to-face encounter with horror unfolds.
