Murder of Lola Daviet

On 14 October 2022, 12-year-old Lola Daviet was reported missing after she failed to return home from school in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, France. Her father, Johan Daviet, the caretaker of the family's apartment building, reported her disappearance to police that afternoon; her mother, Delphine Daviet-Ropital, posted about the disappearance on Facebook the same evening. A review of the building's CCTV footage showed Lola entering the building and following a woman into an apartment. That night, a homeless man reported finding a body inside a travel trunk. An autopsy determined that Lola had died of asphyxiation; she had also been stabbed and showed evidence of cervical compression.

Lola Daviet was born on 18 August 2010 in Béthune. She attended Collège Georges Brassens in Paris and competed in aerobics.

Investigators identified Dahbia Benkired, then 24, as a suspect after CCTV footage showed her leaving the building carrying heavy luggage that included the trunk holding Lola's body. Duct tape and a box cutter were recovered from the building's basement. On 17 October 2022, Benkired was indicted on charges of murder of a minor under 15, rape with torture, and acts of barbarism. Benkired, an Algerian national, had entered France legally in 2016 on a student visa that she later overstayed. She had no prior criminal record and had previously been a victim of domestic violence. Weeks before the killing, on 21 August 2022, she had been detained at Orly Airport without valid travel documents and issued an order to leave French territory, with 30 days to return to Algeria; she remained in France past that deadline.

During questioning, Benkired gave inconsistent accounts of the killing, at different points denying and admitting responsibility. She told investigators that the dispute preceding the killing stemmed from a conflict with Lola's mother, who managed the building where Benkired's sister lived and had denied Benkired's request for building access.

Benkired's trial took place in October 2025. A psychiatric evaluation found her to be of normal intelligence with no psychiatric pathology. On 24 October 2025, the Paris cour d'assises sentenced her to life in prison without the possibility of parole, a sentence known in French law as réclusion criminelle à perpétuité incompressible. She is the first woman in France to receive this sentence since it was created in 1994.

The case drew national political attention in France, in part because Benkired had remained in the country after being ordered to leave. President Emmanuel Macron met with Lola's parents on 19 October 2022. Lola's father struggled with alcoholism after his daughter's death and died on 23 February 2024 in Fouquereuil, at age 49. The family's attorney said Lola's parents asked that politicians not use their daughter's case and image for political purposes.