The facts are rare, but not exceptional either. On Sunday, a 42-year-old Polish man, in an advanced state of intoxication, was arrested in the metro in Paris, after pushing a traveler towards the tracks. Around 6 p.m., the suspect, whose behavior was agitated, approached a 57-year-old man on the platform of line 7 at Opéra station, and violently shoved him. Luckily, the latter managed to maintain his balance and avoid falling on the rails. His attacker was arrested shortly after and taken into police custody. An investigation was opened for “violence in a state of obvious intoxication, without incapacity for work”, indicates to 20 minutes the Paris prosecutor’s office. The suspect was still being questioned by the police this Tuesday.
This is a typical case of a metro pusher. A fairly rare phenomenon, which only concerns a few cases each year, but which arouses concern among users. It must be said that certain cases receive significant media coverage, particularly when their outcome was fatal. Last July, a 52-year-old woman died after being pushed onto the tracks of the Cité-Universitaire RER B station, just as the train was arriving. His attacker was arrested and taken into custody for murder before being taken to the I3P, the psychiatric institute of the police headquarters.
As revealed The Parisian, this forty-year-old is a repeat offender. He had already been arrested in October 2011 after pushing a young man onto the tracks at Strasbourg-Saint-Denis station. Declared not criminally responsible, he was hospitalized under duress for five years.
“There is not necessarily a desire to kill”
Few studies have been devoted to the subject. In 1999, psychiatrist Eric Corbobesse wrote a dissertation on “metro pushers” and studied, in this context, the medical files of around thirty authors. For him, their motivations are a “mixture of medical and social causes”, he explains to 20 minutes. The doctor notes that there are “typical profiles”, which he divides into two categories. On the one hand, “very drunk people”, who act out while they are “in a sort of mental confusion”.
On the other, “people suffering from severe psychotic disorders” and who find themselves “in a very precarious social context”. “There is not necessarily a desire to kill,” he emphasizes. “These are people who spend a lot of time delirious and who, at a given moment, will choose a victim on the platform who they will take for the devil, someone who wants them harm and who must be eliminated . All cases are very different. »
The psychiatrist observes that these cases often concern “all these people left behind” who take refuge in the corridors of the metro, “in particular the homeless who find themselves in public places, more and more ill, more and more violent “. “This raises the question of how to treat the most vulnerable people in Paris, who suffer from mental pathologies,” he insists.
“Their actions are not predictable”
A another study, carried out in 2005, focused on eight cases hospitalized at the Paul-Guiraud Center in Villejuif (Val-de-Marne). These people had “attempted or succeeded in pushing one or more people under a metro train” between 1981 and 2005. The authors noted that “the profile of a homeless schizophrenic patient, out of care,” emerged. All were “men, single, without children”, aged in their thirties. The vast majority were “unemployed at the time of the events” and were receiving “the disabled adult allowance”.
Interviewed in 2011 by 20 minutes, one of the authors of the study, psychiatrist Magali Bodon-Bruzel, recognized that it was also difficult to anticipate this type of fact. “It’s the problem of dangerous patients. Their actions are not predictable unless we examine them beforehand because we can treat them, we have medications, treatments against psychoses.” As a precaution, if screen doors are not installed on the platform, you will be advised to wait for the metro near the wall rather than near the platform.
When contacted, neither the RATP nor the police headquarters have, at this time, responded to our questions.