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
Where were the other 1198 staff while this hideous violence was going on? Oh, I forgot, this is France - They were undoubtedly away on holiday or on strike for more holidays.
Sacre bleu, ze socialized medical care is leaving somezing to be desired.
But you can turn your head from mass murderers in ~other~ countries, like Iraq, without a pang of guilt?
Another summer's on the way. That will probably even scarier to them all.
Former ACLU - Very good tagline! It forced me to look up Samizdat which definition is posted below. Thanks!
SAMIZDAT: a system in the U.S.S.R. and countries within its orbit by which government-suppressed literature was clandestinely printed and distributed; also : such literature
Another example of French medical care, where 19,000 dehydrated elderly folks were sent home from the understaffed hospitals to bake to death in their little un-air-conditioned apartments in the heat wave of August 2003. I know, I was there.
I propose a new definition for SAMIZDAT: a system in the USA by which Socialist/Mainstream Media/Government-suppressed information is clandestinely distributed.
You've got my vote.
Only the Idiot French would give a crazy person a weapon.
Well, I guess, that's why the French can't have guns.
*sigh*
I supposed it needs asking: are the perps Muslims?
Straight out of a horror flick...
Unlikely. This was an inmate- the Muslim psychopaths are all walking free.
"They were undoubtedly away on holiday or on strike for more holidays."
No doubt. What are they saying, a bunch of drunks, well, 4 drunks did this? That seems a little unbelievable. Unless they were 4 little drunks named Mo.
It seems like violence is getting more horrific. I wonder if more demons are loosed on earth lately.
In terms of murder rates and the kinds of weapons used, violence today is nowhere near as bad as in the middle ages. It may seem to be getting worse lately, but that's because the news media has turned violent crime into their leading stories and so we hear more about the nastiest crimes. Rates of violent crime actually have been declining in America over the last ten years. But there does appear to be an increase in beheadings by terrorists in Iraq and copycat killers in other countries like France. Still, sometimes I wonder if the world is regressing towards the horrific middle ages.
It does seem that the "Patina" of civility and civilization is fraying under the weight of the extremes deosn't it.
I use the word "Patina" (A superficial covering or exterior) because it's what I see every time there is the opportunity for some (Most?) people to behave in a lawless fashion such as an extended Power Outage or an out-of-control soccer match, etc. Hell, sometimes I see it right here on FR!
Writing fan letters to Ira Einhorn?
This sounds like something out of Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstein:.
"Torch" is Eurotrash for flashlight.
This is awful. France is asleep and the terror is in the house. The end of a society unfolds.
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