Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez announced Monday June 22 to request “a command investigation to shed light on the responsibilities of each participant” in the handling of Little Rosa’s complaint in August 2025 after the inspection report in the wake of the Lyhanna affair highlighting “failures”.
The minister also indicated in a press release that he “wished that the director of investigation and the company commander of Condom”, in Gers, “be subject to an automatic transfer in the interest of the service and that they be placed in jobs outside the exercise of the judicial police”.
The pre-report of the inspection mission, carried out after the death of Lyhanna, “highlights a clear distinction between an initial phase of treatment judged by the diligent, efficient and proactive inspection by the Plaisance-du-Touch gendarmerie brigade and the Toulouse public prosecutor’s office, on the one hand, and a later phase marked by failures in monitoring, coordination and management at the level of the Auch public prosecutor’s office and the Condom gendarmerie company, on the other hand and which requires taking different measures,” explains Laurent Nuñez.
In the first phase, “all possible investigations were carried out in an optimal manner (…) with great consideration for the victim, deploying pedagogy and listening,” he continues. On the other hand, the transfer of the procedure to the Auch public prosecutor’s office, which has territorial jurisdiction, “caused a break in continuity in the monitoring of the procedure and the perception of danger and urgency”, observes the minister.
Pointing to “failing mechanisms for controlling and prioritizing this file (…)”, institutional support for the victim which “was not up to the challenge”, Laurent Nuñez deplores that “these collective failures (did) not make it possible to correct individual failings, more particularly within the Auch public prosecutor’s office and the Lectoure brigade”, in charge of the investigation.
The minister underlines, moreover, that “the investigation strategy (…) influenced by the desire to consolidate the file before the placement in police custody” of Jérôme Barella, “who had already escaped prosecution twice”, led “to other missions taking precedence over the file, left without any new act of investigation or control since February 14, by a proven lack of discernment, despite the eight calls for help from the victim’s mother”.
“The conclusions of the investigation will lead to determining the necessary and appropriate disciplinary measures and, if necessary, to taking other individual measures,” warns the minister.
