Strong emotion after the death of the stabbed nurse at Reims hospital – RT in French

Stabbed within the Reims University Hospital by an unbalanced person, Carène succumbed to his injuries on May 23. The political class pays him a vibrant tribute. A drama which is part of the context of the continuous increase in violence in France.

Emotion and support of political staff after the death of Carène, 38, on May 23. The nurse had been attacked with a knife the day before in the university hospital center (CHU) of Reims. Another victim of the same individual, a 56-year-old medical secretary was hospitalized without her vital prognosis being engaged.

This violent death is “one of the most intense tragedies that can affect our nation”, underlined this May 23 Olivier Véran, spokesperson for the government. François Braun had announced in a tweet the same morning the death of the nurse. “My thoughts go out to his family, to his colleagues, as well as to all the bereaved hospital teams this morning,” added the Minister of Health.

In a few days, several of our public officials died in the service of our fellow citizens.

Yaël Braun-Pivet, President of the National Assembly, for her part reacted on Twitter: “The drama of the CHU de Reims affects the entire Nation”, she was moved. “It was in a few days several of our public officials who died in the service of our fellow citizens”, underlined for her part Elisabeth Borne, associating with the nurse from Reims the three police officers from Roubaix killed on May 21 in a collision and the agent of the Interdepartmental Directorate of Atlantic Roads (Dira) mowed down by a car the next day in Charente-Maritime.

“To their families, to their loved ones and to all their colleagues, I want to express the immense pain which is mine and that of my government and to assure them of the recognition of the Nation”, added the Prime Minister.

A ‘terrifying murder’

Interviewed on May 23 by RMC-BFMTV, Eric Ciotti expressed his “emotion” in the face of this “terrifying murder”. The president of the Republicans (LR), however, wanted to go further, proposing “a major psychiatry plan” to straighten out a sector which has suffered a “cruel collapse of means, affected beds”.

Indeed, according to the first elements of the investigation communicated by Matthieu Bourrette, public prosecutor of Reims, the presumed assassin, aged 59, “seems to have acted without apparent motive, especially since he had no no appointment in this service, and was not followed within this service”. He “seems to be suffering from severe disorders and has been the subject of a reinforced curatorship measure for several years”, specifies the press release from the magistrate, adding that the suspect had benefited in June 2022 from a dismissal “for criminal irresponsibility” after being “indicted in Châlons-en-Champagne for acts of aggravated violence”. The facts have been reclassified as “assassination” and “attempted assassination” concerning the injured medical secretary, further specifies Matthieu Bourrette.

The event marks public opinion all the more because it is far from being isolated.

120 knife attacks per day

At the hospital first of all, as the French Hospital Federation (FHF) underlines in a press release according to which this attack “is part of a more general context marked, in recent years, by several acts of physical violence or verbal in public hospitals”. In fact, the order of doctors recorded in 2022 more than 1,200 declared incidents, an increase of 23% in one year. “I will convene a committee before the end of the week with all the stakeholders, the unions, the professionals” to “see what can be done to guarantee even more safety for caregivers”, had also announced the Minister of Health on the very day of the attack.

The sudden death of Carène is also part of a general rise in violence in France. In 2020, the National Observatory of Delinquency and Criminal Responses (ONDRP) counted 120 knife attacks per day. For 2019, the figure was 114. It should also be noted that the Ministry of the Interior counted 306,700 physical assaults (including intra-family) in 2021, up 31% since 2017. The same year, the number of homicides stood at 842, placing France well ahead of European countries for this indicator. By way of comparison, in 2020, Germany deplored 719 homicides, compared to 298 in Spain and 285 in Italy.