Tuesday afternoon, while a controller was passing in the TGV cars which linked Paris to Nice, he spotted a passenger who was not wearing a mask.
The man, a 35-year-old Parisian according to France Bleu, refuses to wear one when the controller asks him to.
The latter warns him that he risks having to pay a fine of 135 euros, and that is when the tone would have been raised.
The passenger would thus have hit the controller.
The attacker was subsequently taken into police custody, and the SNCF agent was taken to Avignon hospital with minor injuries. Contacted, the SNCF "obviously deplores this aggression, and supports this controller". Following this incident, the train was delayed for 40 minutes, and two other trips experienced disruptions.
This is not the first time that a transport agent has been assaulted for this reason. In February, for example, a young man spat on a driver of the RER A in Cergy-le-Haut who asked him to wear a mask. In general, health restrictions have been a source of tension since the start of the pandemic, particularly concerning the wearing of masks. With the expansion of the health pass, there has also been an increase in the number of people targeted by this type of attack: elected officials and restaurateurs are subjected to threats and insults, or even are physically attacked.
