Posted on 12/18/2004 8:20:37 PM PST by yankeedame
Nurse beheaded in mental hospital
From correspondents in Paris
December 19, 2004
POLICE have questioned four alcoholic drifters over a gory double murder in a French mental hospital in which a female nurse was beheaded and another savagely stabbed.
Prosecutor Eric Maurel said the men were detained at an apartment in the city after calls to police indicated that one or several of them had participated in or been witness to a scene of violence.
Late yesterday, a fifth man, a former patient who had been released earlier in the week, was also detained.
By the light of torches, police followed a trail of blood down a 20-metre corridor into a recreation room at the clinic where they found the nurse's decapitated head propped on a TV set. The body of her colleague was splayed lifeless in another room "in a sea of blood", one officer said.
Staff turning up for work raised the alarm when they noticed a broken window and traces of blood.
"It was atrocious. Worse than a horror movie. We felt like we were on the other side of a movie screen," one health worker said.
Maurel said the murder weapon had not been found. He said investigators were attempting to retrace the movements of the detained. Staff told police the detained former patient was known as having a potential for violence.
The elderly pageants wing were where the bodies were found early in the morning when the shift changed, Maurel said.
Health Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy visited the hospital to express his "compassion and solidarity" to the families of the victims after what he called a "scandalous, horrible act".
Hospital management announced it was stepping up security around the establishment, where staff have been up in arms about lack of resources and plans to lay off more than 50 workers.
Staff called for the closure of the ward where the murders took place.
"They can't ask us to clean up the blood and keep functioning," said one aide, asking for at least a symbolic closing of the place. "We cannot go on as though nothing happened."
The 45-year-old murdered nurse, who had worked for around 10 years in the hospital, was to have attended a Christmas celebration later in the day with her children.
Authorities were considering moving the patients in the ward to other hospitals or to an unused wing. Douste-Blazy paid homage to hospital staff "who do their job generously and sometimes not without risk".
Vowing that "what happened here will not be forgotten", the minister said he had already discussed stepping up security in casualty units and psychiatric hospitals with Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin, notably setting up direct links with local police precincts.
Douste-Blazy said new measures should be announced within a few weeks, noting that "public and private psychiatric care is lagging enormously behind".
The hospital was built in the 19th century and has a staff of some 1,200 staff catering for 460 patients, officials said.
Agence France-Presse
21st Century meets Murder in the Rue Morgue.
'Put ze candle down.'
LOL. Could it be that not all 1198 people work at the same time? Perhaps not all the employees work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You know, like, maybe they work shifts or somethin'.
It was just a cheap hit by me on the French anyway - No real logic intended. :-)
Actually, the British use the word 'torch' instead of 'flashlight' like Americans.
"Where were the other 1198 staff while this hideous violence was going on? "
200 housekeepers on break or off
4 security guards on a smoke break
300 administative staff- nowhere near the patient care area
200 grounds keepers
250 dietary workers
30 maintainance workers- on holiday
100 nurse managers- at a conference in Nice
50 nurses called in faility wide
62 other actual nurses divided by three shifts
the other nurse was on smoke break
As you have pointed out, the important consideration is what the staffing levels were for the patient load.
I am a psychiatrist and part of my job is taking care of large numbers of inpatients on an acute care mental health unit in northern Minnesota. People in these settings are capable of monstrous behaviors and need to be adequately supervised. Clearly there are security issues on any unit where psychiatric patients have access to anything capable of being used in a decapitation.
As an aside, several years ago, I was so angry at our administration about issues within our department, that I interviewed for jobs in a foreign country with a socialized health care system. Within the previous year, there had been two completed suicides on the foreign unit security hospital setting. In eighteen years, there had never been a suicide on my units. We dealt with vastly higher numbers of more disturbed patients than they did. There problems were obvious to me and were directly related to physical plant design and to staffing levels.
If the act had been committed by an inmate it would still be damning but the fact that a number of what appears to be out-of-place bums could break windows, slaughter two nurses and leave - And the crime not be discovered until staff arrived for shift change is scary.
Makes one wonder what the patients are able to do to themselves or other patients in the midst of such obvious out of control supervision.
Also, Europeans are all on phony disability anyway, so the staffing numbers are completely bogus.
THis sounds like a scene from Halloween II.
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