The trial of Sergio Gil Gonzalès, tried for having drowned his little girl on July 18, 2020 in Avignon, continues before the Assize Court of Vaucluse this Tuesday, March 28. The president plans to reclassify the facts as assassination, by asking the question of the premeditation of this appalling act.
“I want him to know that his daughter loved him and trusted him”: the mother of Sarah, this 11-year-old girl who died on July 18, 2020 in Avignon, drowned in the Rhône where her father had thrown her after him having tied the hands and feet with a cord, continues this Tuesday, March 28 before the Assize Court of Vaucluse.
Hélène’s lawyer, Sarah’s mother, Me François-Xavier Kozan, has just paid tribute to his poignant testimony before the court and the jurors, who have examined since Monday morning the personality of this 41-year-old Spaniard, against who Sarah’s mother had filed a complaint, because of her violence.
A rosary in hand in the box
“I ask forgiveness” said at the opening of the hearing this man who appeared emaciated after three years of detention and alcohol withdrawal, and who is holding a rosary in the box. Sergio and Hélène had met in 1999 in Madrid, when they were both 17 years old, and had settled together in Les Angles (Gard), near Avignon, in 2006, as reported Provence.
30 to 40 cans of beer per day
He was already an alcoholic: “He could drink up to 30 or 40 cans of beer a day,” said his father Rafaël, who filed a civil suit at the hearing. “Everything my son did, he did on his own, under his own responsibility. From the moment he was a prisoner of alcohol, it was very difficult to have any influence on him. I tried everything to get him treated. I tried to get him admitted to the hospital. As he was an adult, I could not force him in any way” he declared, as reported Cnews.
“From the moment he was a prisoner of alcohol, it was very difficult to have any influence over him. I tried everything to get him treated. I tried to get him admitted to the hospital. As he was an adult, I could not force him in any way”
— Noémie Schulz (@noemieschulz) March 27, 2023
“I am a miserable person”
“It is impossible to forget Hélène. Love never fades, I promised her eternal love, she promised it to me too. Today, I am a miserable person, and she is a woman all highly recommendable” also declared the accused, who was nevertheless capable of extreme violence towards the mother of their daughter. Hélène’s sister thus recounted having found her “in a pool of blood, I understood that he had really hit her. It was in 2006. I saw that in his mouth, he was missing teeth. It was a horrific scene.”
“You should give him a kiss”
On the day of the crime, when Hélène had decided to drive Sarah herself to see her father, staying in a hotel in Rochefort-du-Gard, so that he would not know their address, the latter had had this sentence which appears today: terribly prescient: “You should give him a kiss, you never know, there could be a bomb on the bus.”
An element, added to the two ropes that Sergio Gil Gonzales had on him when he left with the child, and which he used to tie her up, before throwing her into the Rhône, which brought the president of the court to Assizes of Vaucluse to announce that he would ask the jury the question of premeditation. A possible change of qualification which would not change the sentence incurred, the accused already risking life for “murder of a 15-year-old minor.” Verdict Wednesday, March 29.
