A week after her gesture of despair in front of the town hall of La Garenne-Colombes (Hauts-de-Seine), the 66-year-old woman who had set herself on fire Saturday, June 3 died Friday at the hospital of Metz-Thionville (Grand-Est), where she had been transferred earlier this week to the burn department.
This act, which his neighbours discovered with horror, was allegedly motivated by great distress related to an eviction procedure from his social housing. It had a large rental debt, of several tens of thousands of euros, according to its landlord Hauts-de-Seine Habitat. But according to the latter, "no eviction was scheduled" and the services "were still looking for a solution" to avoid this outcome.
Rescued by former mayor Philippe Juvin
The police officers who went to his home after the incident also found that the apartment concentrated a large amount of things collected, suggesting that the victim could have Diogenes syndrome. Even if neither his neighbors nor his landlord were aware of this situation.
"We will have to learn from this situation, and the distress related to the loneliness of people in town," said this Saturday morning Philippe Juvin, the former mayor of La Garenne-Colombes and current deputy of the constituency. It was he who rescued the resident last week by extinguishing the fire and providing the first gestures before the arrival of help. The one who is also head of emergencies at the Georges Pompidou Hospital (Paris XVth) feared that the burns caused would most likely be fatal to the sexagenarian.
