new searches in a forest without results

Are we heading towards the end of the mystery surrounding the disappearance of young Lina? The Republican East reports that searches took place in Haute-Saône, in a forest of Saulx, between Vesoul and Luxeuil-les-Bains, on Tuesday August 6. They involved 90 gendarmes. In pairs, they went through the forest, which in some places consisted of high forests and large oaks.

According to the daily, the searches were carried out in a wood of approximately 90 hectares on the edge of the RN 57. Gendarmerie motorcyclists, on off-road motorcycles, secured the perimeter in addition to a police cordon set up at the entrance to the woods. Previous searches last week had proved unsuccessful.

Device lifted at 6 p.m.

Around 6 p.m., between 20 and 30 vehicles, including white or blue gendarmerie vans, left the scene, seemingly signaling the end of the search for the day. The searches will continue on Wednesday, according to a source close to the case. The Strasbourg prosecutor's office, which is in charge of the case, has not commented.

The 15-year-old girl disappeared late Saturday morning, September 23, 2023, after leaving her home in Plaine (Bas-Rhin) to go to the Saint-Blaise-la-Roche train station, about three kilometers away, where she was due to meet her boyfriend.

Despite extensive searches in the following days and the probing of several water points, no trace of the young girl had been found. Until the discovery of Lina's “genetic profile” in a car stolen in the south of France a few days ago. Analysis of the vehicle's geolocation led investigators to focus on this area of ​​the Vosges and to reveal the profile of a suspect, Samuel Gonin, originally from Besançon, who committed suicide in early July.

A violent and unstable profile

The profile of the suspect was refined last Tuesday. Samuel Gonin, 43, killed himself on July 10, “alone at home, without giving a precise explanation for the reasons for his actions”, as revealed by The Republican East. “He was due to appear before the Besançon criminal court on July 22,” the local newspaper reported. “This man, previously unknown to the courts, was due to answer for a series of acts committed in August 2023, just a few weeks before Lina's disappearance.”

On the same day, Samuel Gonin allegedly violently attacked a nonagenarian woman to steal the contents of her handbag and threatened a cashier with a knife for a wad of bills. Arrested last June, “he had already spent time in a psychiatric hospital,” adds L'Est Républicain, specifying that “in the past, he had tried to end his life.”