Lyhanna's disappearance: what Jérôme Barella declared during his police detention
The principal suspect in the rape and death of the 11-year-old secondary school pupil attempted to steer investigators towards the theory of a runaway. France Info has accessed his statements.
Barella's detention: an account riddled with inconsistencies
Jérôme Barella, a 41-year-old temporary worker and principal suspect in the disappearance and death of Lyhanna, an 11-year-old secondary school pupil in the Gers department, sought to guide investigators towards false leads during his interrogation on 30 and 31 May. This is what France Info reveals, having accessed his statements.
At the time of his police detention, the child's body had not yet been found. Barella was only being questioned for abduction and unlawful confinement. Officers asked him to recount his day on 29 May from the moment he woke up.
A fabricated timeline
According to his account, Barella dropped his eldest daughter at school that morning, in front of Lyhanna and another classmate. He describes a customary close relationship with his daughter's friends: "It's like that almost every morning. The girls arrive, they chat a bit with my daughter and me. Often, Lyhanna talks to me when she's had trouble with her parents. I regularly buy her things at Intermarché for a snack, particularly in front of the secondary school."
He then claims that Lyhanna had been asking him for several days to pick her up from secondary school at 3 p.m. that Friday to buy a Mother's Day gift. He details meticulously the route he allegedly took and maintains that he dropped her at the swimming pool. "She seemed cheerful and was talking much more than usual. About Mother's Day and swimming pool stuff," he told officers.
Barella says he then returned home for a bath, then went to collect his youngest daughter from school — without his phone, which he claims he left charging. He asserts that he then returned to his workplace, with both daughters in the car, to close a door at a grain silo. This location is distinct from where Lyhanna's body was found on 4 June.
Lyhanna's mother calls him during the school celebration
Around 6 p.m., Barella went to his youngest daughter's school celebration. This is where Lyhanna's mother attempted to reach him several times. "She was worried because she hadn't come home. I told her we hadn't seen her at 4 p.m. I didn't tell her the fact that I had dropped her at 3 p.m. at the swimming pool, I didn't think of it at the time," he states.
Officers quickly identified numerous inconsistencies in his timeline. When asked what he thought had happened to Lyhanna, Barella steered officers towards the theory of a runaway: "I don't know, maybe she ran away. I know she had been scolded by her parents not long ago, she'd had her phone confiscated, she had already talked about running away. I hope nothing has happened to her."
However, the initial elements of the investigation quickly ruled out this hypothesis: according to her parents, Lyhanna had no reason to run away.
Text messages deemed inappropriate
Regarding his relationship with the child, Barella is evasive. "She's a friend of my daughter and when she talked to me I gave her advice," he replies to officers. He also made remarks inappropriate to the child's age: "I was happy that she managed to talk to me, to tell me the problems she had and above all managed to help her, I felt useful."
Confronted with text messages exchanged with Lyhanna — including "And you, how are your love affairs going?" — he dismisses the questions: "I'm not flirting with her, or anything like that, I don't see anything wrong with it really." He further claims not to be attracted to young girls.
Previous complaints downplayed
According to France Info, Barella was also questioned about previous proceedings against him. At the time of his arrest, he faced complaints for rape of minors filed in 2022 and 2025, although his criminal record was clean. Among his accusers is Rosa, 11 years old, who stated she was raped approximately fifty times by Barella between September 2024 and April 2025.
Facing investigators, he played down these accusations. Regarding the 2022 complaint, he states: "Even the officers thought it was false. It was the mother who was telling the story. [She] was 6 or 7 years old. I don't remember anymore. I was questioned. The case was dropped."
Committal for trial, then the body found
After forty-eight hours of interrogation, Barella was committed for trial and remanded in custody. At this stage, he was formally committed for trial for abduction and unlawful confinement. However, the Agen public prosecutor's office issued a supplementary requisition in order for him to also be committed for trial for rape and murder.
On 4 June, Lyhanna's body was discovered at an agricultural facility in the Gers department. The autopsy established that she had been raped, but did not make it possible to determine "with certainty" the cause of death, according to the Agen public prosecutor's office. This discovery sparked a wave of emotion and anger in the country, and triggered an investigation mission which concluded that there were malfunctions within the justice system.
Source: France Info