A 24-year-old Somali national accused of fatally stabbing his Congolese roommate 50 times in May 2021 has been declared not criminally responsible and will be hospitalized in a psychiatric ward, a French court has ruled.
According to the judgment passed down by the investigating chamber at the Caen Court of Appeal on Tuesday, the migrant killer does not have the capacity to stand trial for the man’s murder, Ouest France reported.
The case pertains to an incident on May 22, 2021, when police discovered the body of 54-year-old Sylvain-Médard Louhemba in a shared housing apartment in the La Guérinière district of Caen, Calvados.
“His musician friends, who realized he had not been coming to djembe practice, became worried and rang his apartment on rue Jean-Jacques-Rousseau,” explained Séraphin Massamba, president of the Congolese Solidarity Association, at the time.
After gaining access to the building, his friends noticed bloodstains on the front door and called the police. He was found dead with around 50 stab wounds in what appeared to be a frenzied attack.
His roommate, a 21-year-old Somali national, was identified as the sole suspect.
After fleeing Caen, he eventually handed himself into a police station in Paris, telling the authorities he had committed murder.
Psychiatric evaluations conducted during the investigation diagnosed the suspect with a paranoid delusional disorder that rendered him incapable of understanding his actions at the time of the crime. A recent second opinion confirmed that his criminal liability was entirely abolished due to his condition.
The court ordered the suspect’s hospitalization in a psychiatric ward. He has also been prohibited from residing in the Calvados region for 20 years, except in specialized establishments.
The suspect, described as highly unstable, refused to appear in court via videoconference.
Meanwhile, the court recognized the civil claims filed by several relatives of the victim, awarding them a total of around €100,000 for moral damages.
