Body of girl found in plastic box in a case that has shocked France, Europe
An 8-year-old French girl was found among the hundreds of dead bodies of the young victims of the Paris terror attack in November 2016, her body was found in a plastic box in a case that has shocked France.
The child had been living near the Porte de La Bourse for about two months, her parents told Le Parisien. There was no sign of forced entry and she only had a plastic box holding her clothes.
She had received counselling the day she was found, but her mother, a police constable, could not be contacted for a long time because she was on sick leave, the newspaper said. She said she felt the attack was “a punishment”, a term she also used for the attack perpetrated by the Islamic State.
The girl had been playing outside in the area of the Porte de La Bourse at the time of the attack, which killed 130 people, 86 of whom were police officers.
“How could someone just throw them there?” the mother asked. She said the girl had not been with anyone.
The child would not give her mother’s name, but people in the neighbourhood identified her as a girl from the town of Pontivy who had gone missing after her family last saw her.
“I don’t know what the parents are like, but I think they are very nice,” the mother said, declining to give her the name of her partner, whom she said often helped her find work after her husband was sent to jail.
“When she was found, her mother had a little girl, who was crying and scared. They were very worried. She was crying really hard and they couldn’t speak because she was so upset,” the mother said.
The mother said the girl had been found with a “tattered coat” – although it was difficult to know what had been left of it. The mother said she was not trying to justify what happened but expressed a “total shock” that the girl