Two days after the knife attack at Reims University Hospital that claimed the life of a nurse and seriously injured a medical secretary, the public prosecutor announced at a press conference on Wednesday at midday the opening of a judicial investigation for murder and attempted murder. The alleged attacker is to be presented to an investigating judge this Thursday as part of his possible indictment.
Indeed, according to the first elements of the investigation, the man, known for chronic psychoses since his childhood, resented for years the hospital staff and especially psychiatry. "He resented the hospital environment, the white coats."
On Monday, this Rémoins attacked Carène Mezino, 37, with a knife in a locker room of the hospital. Struck with multiple wounds to the chest and abdomen, according to the details of the prosecutor of the Republic Matthieu Bourette, this mother of two children of 8 and 11 years died in the night from Monday to Tuesday. His colleague, a medical secretary, was stabbed five times. She is now out of danger.
The hearings of the suspect in hospital custody were agitated. He said he bought the gun, a kitchen knife, on the day of the attack. The alleged attacker, a 59-year-old man with a long psychiatric history, is suspected of "murder", but also of "attempted assassination", a medical secretary having also been injured during the facts. The prosecutor described him as a "paranoid and schizophrenic suspect". "His psychiatrist did not expect such a passage to the act, he was for him stabilized, he came every day to the appointment to take his medication, including the last time on the day of the facts," he detailed. He had been under psychiatric care since 1985.
He showed "no regret, no empathy" towards the victims.
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This man had benefited in June 2022 from a dismissal "for criminal irresponsibility" after an indictment for "aggravated violence" in a previous case. According to a source close to the case, it was already a knife attack.
The attack took place in the occupational medicine unit of the hospital, located next to the psychiatric department where the suspect was followed, said Sandrine Calvy, head of CGT-Health in the Marne. According to Valérie Rozalski, CGT general secretary of the establishment, the attack "took place in the locker room". "A priori, she had stained her blouse and she was going to change."
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The nurse died despite "many hours of care in the operating room and intensive care," the CHU said in a statement. The institution's executive director, Laetitia Micaelli-Flender, paid tribute to a woman "who has spent her life in the service of others."
A minute of silence will also be observed Wednesday in all hospitals of France, at the request of François Braun, who had gone Monday evening to the University Hospital of Reims.
VIDEO. "An appalling drama": the tribute of the Reims University Hospital to the nurse killed in a knife attack
Questioned three times during questions in the National Assembly, the minister promised to bring together Thursday morning unions and representatives of health professionals so that "we see immediately if there are possible solutions to improve this security".
