The prosecutor on Wednesday gave many details about the past of this 59-year-old man. The magistrate requested his indictment, as well as his placement in pre-trial detention as part of a hospitalization in a prison environment.
A little more than 48 hours after the knife attack perpetrated at the Reims University Hospital, the prosecutor in charge of the investigation, Matthieu Bourrette, held a press conference on Wednesday May 24. The magistrate gave news of the injured medical secretary and provided details on the course of the attack which cost the life of a nurse. He also provided extensive information about the arrested man and his state of mental health. Here is what to remember from this speech.
Injured medical secretary ‘out of danger’
The Reims public prosecutor first gave news of the 56-year-old medical secretary who survived this Toattack in the changing rooms of the occupational medicine and health unit of the CHU de Reims. She is “out of danger” and could be heard on Tuesday by the investigators. She said she received “five stab wounds”.
His colleague, Carène Mezino, a 37-year-old nurse, mother of two children aged 8 and 11, died of her injuries on the night of Monday to Tuesday. She didn’t survive “to internal bleeding caused by damage to thoracic and abdominal organs”said the prosecutor.
The suspect acted “without apparent motive”
The 59-year-old man, quickly arrested after the attack, is single and without professional activity. He acted alone, using a kitchen knife with a blade of 15 to 20 centimeters, found on him at the time of the arrest, reports the magistrate. He seems to have acted “without apparent motive towards the victims”. He had no appointment in the department that day. Ofs his arraignment, he said “repeatedly resenting the hospital environment by saying that they have been mistreated” and “every time he would come across a white coat, he would plant it”.
While in custody, “particularly difficult” and carried out “in hospital”the suspect held some “totally incoherent words”, explained the prosecutor. However, he admitted to assaulting “the two health personnel because of their quality, because he resented psychiatry, which he described as criminal, murderer, false token”. The man also explained that he was thinking of taking action “for many months”.
The prosecutor declared that he had opened a judicial investigation for assassination and attempted assassination and requested the indictment of the suspect as well as his placement in pre-trial detention within the framework of a hospitalization in a prison environment. It is now up to the investigating judge to decide or not on this indictment.
He was followed for a long time for “schizophrenia” and “paranoia”
The suspect was followed “since 1985” For “schizophrenia” And “paranoia”, said the prosecutor. He was the subject of numerous hospital stays and had the status of disabled adult. In 2017, “against a background of severe pathology of the persecutory syndrome type and chronic psychosis since adolescence”he stopped his treatment and attacked on June 21, with a knife, four members of the staff of the establishment of help through work (Esat) where he worked.
Indicted in Chalons-en-Champagne for these acts of aggravated violence, he was not placed in detention, but hospitalized under duress for more than two years (June 2017 to August 2019). He again stayed in a psychiatric hospital for a few weeks in the fall of 2020 (from September 22 to October 17) and then for two months in 2021 (from July 12 to September 14).
On June 30, 2022, i.e. five years after the events, the investigating judge rendered “an order for the purposes of referral to the investigating chamber, linked to a plurality of expert reports reporting the abolition of the discernment of the person concerned”. It is within the framework of this procedure that a hearing must take place before the Court of Appeal, Friday, May 23. At its conclusion, a declaration of criminal irresponsibility can be pronounced in this first case, and security measures that can go as far as compulsory hospitalization can be taken. The prosecutor clarified that no link between this new acting out and this hearing had been established.
He recognized “care breaks”
This man from Reims had been placed under reinforced curatorship for more than five years. The investigation revealed a difference of view between the legal representative in charge of this curatorship and the psychiatrist. The first told investigators that the patient was no longer taking his treatment regularly. “since at least December 2020”, that he had made several “verbal attacks”, the last of which on May 15, 2023, a week before the facts. The legal representative clarified “having opened up on several occasions to the psychiatrist”, “making reports without follow-up” and that the mother of the fifty-year-old “had the same fears of a new acting out”.
The psychiatrist, also heard, maintained that his patient, whom he has been following since “more than five years”was “stabilized” for six months, that the treatment had been taken and that “the protective measure was no longer justified”. The suspect came every day of the week to the medical service to take his pills and, on Friday, he collected his bag for the weekend.
“The taking of the drugs is done in front of the nurses, but the reality and the completeness of the ingestion are not checked”specified the prosecutor, adding that a sachet “neither opened nor started” was found during the search of his home. The person concerned himself admitted “significant periods of disruption of care”. The judicial information must in particular seek “whether or not there was continuity in the medical care or, on the contrary, a break in care at the initiative of the respondent”concluded Matthieu Bourrette.