By Franck Essi

I. A Heinous Crime, a Society Challenged

On May 10, 2025, in a neighborhood of Yaoundé, six-year-old Mathis was brutally stabbed to death by a visibly unbalanced adult. Shock, emotion, and outrage gripped an entire country.

How could a man commit such an abominable, unjustifiable, and radically inhuman act? What happened? How did it come to this?

This tragedy is not just a personal tragedy. It holds a mirror up to our society. A mirror of our silences, our blindness, our failings. It forces us to ask the right questions. Not to lessen the gravity of the act, but to prevent it from happening again.

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II. Behind the Crime, Ignored Signals

Apparently, this wasn’t the first time this man had caused problems. According to several sources, he had recently been involved in another violent incident that resulted in death. And yet, he was still free. He was walking around the neighborhood. He was interacting with his family. Until the horror struck.

How can we explain such permissiveness? Where were the social services? Where was the justice system? Where was the medical follow-up? Why didn’t we know how to detect what was about to explode?

The truth is that our society is still too ill-prepared to manage risky behavior. Too slow. Too helpless. Too silent in the face of mental distress, repressed rage, and simmering pathology.

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III. Thinking about Crime Differently: Understanding in Order to Prevent

It must be said bluntly: some crimes can only be prevented if we understand what makes them possible. This means investing in undervalued disciplines: clinical psychology, psychiatry, behavioral sciences, criminology. Because behind every extreme act, there is often a twisted story. A shattered childhood. A poorly digested suffering. A spiral of frustration, loneliness, or denial.

It was while watching the American series Criminal Minds a few years ago that I grasped the extent of this complexity. Investigators from the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Unit analyze serial killers, not to excuse them, but to decipher what drives them, to intervene in time, to save lives. And what we discover is that monstrosity is rarely spontaneous. It is shaped. And sometimes predictable.

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IV. Don’t Forget Our Own Knowledge

But while modern sciences are essential, our traditions should not be neglected. For centuries, in our villages, in our extended families, in our spiritual circles, we have been able to spot the signs of imbalance. We spoke then of possession, of a disorder of the soul, of a mystical disorder, of a break in connection with the world order.

These words may not be the same as those used in psychiatry. But these practices were forms of community therapy. They served to protect, to heal, to isolate when necessary, to restore mental and social balance. We have lost this knowledge. And in this void, tragedies sometimes arise.

It is time to revalue the bridges between modern medicine and traditional wisdom, between behavioral sciences and African therapeutic anthropology. It is at this intersection that a true path to prevention may lie.

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V. What Mathis’s Murder Teaches Us

The murder of little Mathis is a scandal. An open wound. But this tragedy must become a national lesson. He calls on us to build a more vigilant, more protective, more aware society.

This requires:

– Recognizing mental health as a public health priority,

– Strengthening community and institutional alert units,

– Reconnecting our social systems with our traditions of care,

– Creating listening and anticipation mechanisms in every neighborhood, every family, every community.

We must stop waiting for the worst to happen before taking action. Safety is not just a matter of law enforcement. It is a matter of social connection, collective memory, and caring for the soul.

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My conviction: Civilization begins with vigilance over humanity.

There is no civilized society without the ability to anticipate, without prevention policies, without a culture of shared responsibility.

Mathis is not just a victim. He is the symbol of a question we must all confront: are we ready to make mental health, psychological balance, and child protection a national cause?

If this results in mobilization, reform, and awareness, then perhaps we can say that his memory has not been betrayed.

To you, Mathis, may God and our ancestors welcome your soul and bring justice and consolation to all those left in immeasurable desolation by your tragic passing.

Franck Essi

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