A police officer investigating the horrific murder and rape of a 12-year-old Parisian girl has spoken of the trauma of discovering her little body in a suitcase.
Lola Daviet's corpse was found bound and gagged with the numbers 1 and 0 scrawled across her chest inside a trunk left in the foyer of her family's apartment block in Paris.
A 24-year-old Algerian homeless woman, named Dahbia B in local media reports, has been charged with committing " harm of a sexual nature " and "other violent acts" that resulted in the schoolgirl's death.
Shockwaves have ripped through France after the girl's tragic death, with the police men and women who discovered her tortured body needing psychological support after the horrific find.
Local media reported yesterday how a mental health aid centre has been set up outside the 19th Arrondisement police station as a preventative measure against suicide.
One officer involved in the operation, who BFMTV called "Adrien" to protect his anonymity, has detailed how their "fears were crystallised" when they found the trunk.
He said police paid particular attention to the call made by Lola's parents, Delphine and Johan Daviet, who reported her missing on Friday around 4pm after she failed to return from her nearby school.
Delphine and Johan are the guardians of their building, so had access to security tapes from the front lobby.
Stills from the security cameras released to the public show Lola entering the building with a woman unknown to her parents, who investigators say is Dahbia B.
Cops sprung into action, canvassing the neighbourhood - fearing they only had a limited time-scale from Lola's last sighting.
"We start to worry, we say to ourselves that we have to act quickly to find Lola", said Adrien.
One witness gave the police another terrifying clue, recalling how he saw a "very strange woman with a trunk", carrying what he suspected was a "corpse".
This is later confirmed around 11pm when police receive a call to tell them a homeless man had found a box with a body crammed inside it, he added.
Adrien says: "When we hear that on our radio waves, it's a shock, our fears are crystallized. When we understand that we haven't managed to save her, that's the hardest part."
A small crew was then assembled to assess whether the person found in the box was the little girl they were looking for.
"We approach, we listen to the description made by the colleagues who must have identified the corpse, but we don't go so far as to look ourselves, we are too afraid of being shocked by what we are going to discover, we suspect that it is a horror," he said.
A subsequent autopsy revealed the youngster was asphyxiated and had suffered numerous injuries, including wounds on her shoulders and back, as well as blows to the face.
Speaking about the psychological aid cell, Adrien added: "This [...] support is very important. The policeman who tells himself that he does not need it, he is making a serious mistake."
Another man unwillingly roped into Dahbia's sick crimes was the taxi driver forced to transport the youngster's corpse and the murderess in his cab.
At around 10pm on Friday, the woman's friend is said to have ordered a VTC taxi to collect Dahbia, her trunk and two cabin suitcases from the Asnières-sur-Seine district of Paris.
Speaking with Le Parisien, Abdel remembered how the suspect coolly questioned him while riding in the backseat with a child's corpse just a few feet behind her.
"She asks me how the job is going for me, if I have clients, if it's going well," he told the French outlet.
"I tell her that she's fine and I ask her what she does for a living."
However, he was stunned by some "offbeat" remarks Dahbia made and the "tone" of their exchange.
After telling him she worked for Uber Eats, he asked whether it was a busy job, to which she said she'd prefer to keep that detail "for myself".
Abdel said he's been left "traumatised" by the incident after linking Dahbia's "childish insistence" on getting a packet of sweets to the dead girl in the boot.
The Parisien journalist who met the driver later appeared on BFMTV, where he explained: "With hindsight, the driver is traumatised by this discrepancy between these childish and insistent requests and the presence of the corpse of little Lola just in the back in the trunk."
