A 31-year-old man was arrested after he confessed to the murder (Picture: AFP)
A 14-year-old girl has been abducted, raped and killed in France.
The teenager, named locally as Vanessa, was reportedly bundled into a car as she left school in Tonneins, in the south-west of the country.
Her body was found by police in an abandoned house.
A 31-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of her rape and murder.
The prosecutor in Agen, southern France, told reporters on Saturday that when police went to arrest the man at his flat in the southern city of Marmande, he said, ‘I know why you are here’ and confessed.
Authorities said the man had previously been sentenced to a 15-day suspended jail term for sexual aggression towards another minor in 2006, when the suspect was just 15 years old.
Dante Rinaudo, mayor of Tonneins, told reporters on Monday that Vanesa’s parents, who are of Colombian origin, want to bury their daughter in Grenada, Spain, where the family had lived several years before moving to France.
An online fundraiser has been launched to support the family, and Mr Rinaudo added that he would organise a march for the victim on Friday.
This picture, of 14 year-old Vanessa, has been shared by her family’s lawyers (Picture: AFP)
People look at flowers on the gates of Germillac College on November 21 (Picture: AFP)
The incident in Tonneins comes just weeks after France was rocked by the brutal killing of a 12-year-old girl named Lola.
Her battered body was found in a suitcase outside her Paris home.
The main suspect in that case, a 24-year-old woman, has been accused of murder, rape and acts of torture.
Lola’s murder became a source of political tension, with opposition parties seizing on the profile of the suspect – an illegal immigrant – to call for tougher immigration policies.
In both cases, the far-right opposition has criticised judicial and political authorities as being soft on crime and not doing enough to keep dangerous individuals off the streets.
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Her death comes just weeks after France was rocked by the brutal killing of a 12-year-old girl named Lola.
