Kortrijk (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – The police released the husband of the woman whose dead body was discovered at their Molentjesstraat residence in Kooigem near Kortrijk in West Flanders on Tuesday. Police authorities conducted an investigation into the man, who remains free despite facing no suspicion.
Local authorities released the male partner of the deceased person, whose Molentjesstraat home in Kooigem lies near Kortrijk, following a police interview. Authorities ruled out the man as someone they needed to investigate regarding this death. Without an identified cause of death, the public prosecutor’s office maintains a suspicious stance regarding this matter.
The woman’s partner alerted his nearby neighbours with fear after finding her unresponsive in her bed. The police received verification after the neighbour witnessed the dead body before they arrived on the scene to question the man. Law enforcement officials detained the man overnight but let him go immediately without filing any charges.
The lawyer for the man who reported the incident said expert teams found no external signs of attack on the deceased woman’s body. Law enforcement officials, along with forensic experts, continue to identify the precise reason behind the woman’s death.
How common are suspicious deaths in the Kortrijk region?
The Federal Police of Belgium reported that, through their annual statistics, 12 suspicious death incidents occurred in West Flanders in 2022, while 5 cases remained without resolution.
The recorded homicide rates in this province show stability during the past five years by remaining at 1.2 incidents per 100,000 residents, which is less than the national average of 1.7 homicides per 100,000. Each year, the Kortrijk judicial district investigates 30–40 mysterious fatalities, while the local courts request autopsies for 60% of these cases.
The Institute for Forensic Medicine (IFM) reports natural causes as responsible for about 70% of West Flanders’s unexpected death cases, and rare remaining deaths resulting from accidents, together with suicides and homicides.
When police first investigate cases of unexpected death, around 15% prove to have noncriminal explanations following forensic experts’ evaluations. The identification process of a suspicious death requires between 48 hours and multiple weeks, based on toxicology and pathology results.
Local law enforcement documents from Kooigem show domestic fatalities to be exceptionally uncommon since only two cases have occurred during the past decade. All reports from the region ended in a murder-suicide manner. The police response times in Kooigem’s rural setting reach 12 minutes, which is slightly beyond Kortrijk’s 8-minute urban standard.
The public prosecutor’s office states that ninety per cent of suspicious death investigations in the region complete their process within three months, but complex cases require additional time.
