The emergency doctor prescribed fifteen total incapacity for work. The radio shows a broken hand. The face is swollen. The examination also shows numerous bruises on the body. The victim filed a complaint on August 11 with the Thionville police station. She had just spent the weekend with her companion in Strasbourg. She accuses him of drinking, hitting her, then flooding her with messages. She says he pushed her down the hotel stairs, before beating her once in the room, covering her mouth to stifle her cries. His memories are then confused.
The man was immediately arrested, heard and then presented to the Thionville criminal court for the first time in mid-August. He gets a referral to prepare his defense. This Monday, September 13, he continues to deny. “It’s wrong, I’m not violent, I’ve never hit,” he moans, facing the judges. “Except that you were already in recurrence last June”, tackles the president of the hearing. Three months earlier, the accused, aged 42, was sentenced to six months in prison, four of which were suspended, with a ban on contact with his partner. The couple had finally found each other.
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“We’ll have to hit hard”
At the helm, the man tries a whole different version of the weekend. It portrays an alcoholic, violent woman, beside herself. “I grabbed her by the wrists for her to stop, I bit her to let her go,” he defends himself. “What about the marks on his eyes?” “Asks the president. “She fell down the stairs by herself,” he replies. “If you were afraid of her, why didn’t you file a complaint? », Insists the president. “Because I wanted her to heal herself,” he sobs. And this has the gift of annoying the deputy prosecutor, Marie-Pierre Chateauvieux, who advises him “to stop whining”. She resumes her criminal record, recalls that Fabrice Keiff appeared (in all) for the third time before a criminal court for domestic violence. “We’ll have to hit hard,” she announces.
The defense lawyer, she pleads for the release, denounces a botched investigation, without witnesses. But the court pronounces eighteen months in prison, including six months suspended subject to the prohibition to come into contact with the victim in particular. The judges add the revocation of the four-month suspended sentence pronounced last June. The ex-companion is kept in detention.
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