the first elements of the investigation

Missing Friday, Justine Roche was found dead 300 meters from the family home. One lead seems favored by the prosecutor.

What happened in Beaupréau-en-Mauges, this small town in Maine-et-Loire located north of Cholet? Sunday January 5 at midday, the lifeless body of Justine Roche, a 24-year-old geography student, was discovered in an agricultural pond in a place called La Roche Baraton, just 300 meters from her family home. where she had left, Friday January 3, with her dog for what was then only a simple walk.

With no sign of life from the young woman, her relatives reported her disappearance to the police. A disappearance taken very seriously by the gendarmerie who on Saturday launched a call for witnesses and deployed a vast search system with no less than 70 soldiers from the Cholet company, two dog teams with a Saint-Hubert dog, as well as a helicopter from the Gendarmerie Aerial Section (SAG) of Saint-Nazaire and three divers from Nantes, specified in particular the public prosecutor of Angers, Éric Bouillard, at West France.

A hypothesis favored by the Angers public prosecutor’s office

For the Angers public prosecutor’s office, the accidental track seems favored for the moment, even if medical examinations have yet to determine the exact cause of Justine Roche’s death. “The hypothesis is that she would have voluntarily gone down into the collective basin to retrieve her dog,” said the prosecutor, whose West France echoes, while France 3 regions reports that Justine’s dog could have been attacked by a fox, whose body was also found in the basin, and that Justine Roche, by wanting to help her, could have drowned .

“There are no traces of intervention by a third party”, developed the prosecutor, still relaying West France. And Éric Bouillard remarks: “We are looking at someone who voluntarily gets into the water, who takes off their clothes, ties one end and the dog’s leash to be able to get back up.” Little Jack Russell was also found dead.

Near West Francea neighbor confides that the young woman’s parents “are farmers” and that if “she knew the land well”, the place where she was found dead is particularly “dangerous”. The basin would in fact be “difficult to access, surrounded by a fence and located high up”.