doctor found dead under rubble

Rescuers found the lifeless body of a victim in the night of Saturday to Sunday in the rubble of two buildings which had collapsed on Saturday morning in the center of Lille. After completing their search, the emergency services confirmed that it was indeed the body of the missing doctor. Alexandre Klein, 45, was a psychiatrist at the Calais hospital center and was on call this weekend. He slept in an apartment that had been lent to him, at 42 rue Pierre-Mauroy, the building which was not evacuated during the night.

A 45-year-old psychiatrist

Saturday morning, the identity of the victim was still unknown, but the relief already assumed that it was the psychiatrist. The commander of the rescue operations, Stéphane Beauventre, had declared: “there is a lot of convergence so that we are on the person we have been looking for since noon”. “His body went to the forensic institute,” he said, where he was identified. The doctor’s body was located shortly before 1:30 a.m., a police source said. The prefecture had confirmed the discovery of a deceased person.

A psychological support unit will be set up for his colleagues at the hospital.

Martine Aubry had affirmed that there were “a priori no victims” on Saturday morning

Two three-storey buildings, one of which was under construction, had collapsed on Saturday around 9:15 a.m. on rue Pierre-Mauroy, a shopping street in the city center, but most of the inhabitants had been able to be evacuated thanks to the alert launched by one of them a few hours earlier.

Several politicians had initially indicated that there were “a priori” no victims, before the firefighters announced that they were looking for this doctor whose car was parked on the spot and who had not presented himself to his appointment. Another person, slightly injured, could be evacuated above the rubble on Saturday afternoon, according to the emergency services.