She was fatally stabbed in the neck. Assunta Tegas, an emigrant from Lanusei , was killed in her home in Forbach, a town in north-eastern France. She was 85 years old and it was her daughter Cristina who found her body on Monday evening, worried about not having heard from her mother in the previous hours. The person suspected of the murder is a 40-year-old local man, suffering from psychiatric disorders, who the victim knew well: the man often went to visit Assunta Tegas, considering her as a godmother. The alleged killer was stopped by the Gendarmerie.
The murder
On Monday Assunta Tegas, mother of five children, was in her home in the Bruch district of Forbach, a center of 22 thousand residents where she had moved in the 1950s together with her husband, Luigi Vargiu, who passed away in 2006 after years of sacrifices in the mines. Her daughter tried to call her, as usual, to make sure everything was going well, but after receiving no response to a series of calls she rushed to the apartment. It was 8pm when Cristina Vargiu entered the house and found her mother lifeless. The victim was lying on the floor of his bedroom, his head submerged in a pool of blood.
The investigations
Initially, investigators hypothesized a domestic accident as the cause of death, but after a more in-depth clinical examination, the medical examiner found a wound on the neck, probably caused by the blade of a knife. The thesis convinced the public prosecutor Olivier Glady who opened an investigation file, ordering an autopsy and delegating the investigations to the Metz police. The officers collected the first testimonies in the neighborhood. A neighbor reported that at 3pm the woman was alive because she greeted her from the balcony, while in the late afternoon, the nurse who was supposed to visit her said she found the door closed and had no response.
