The announcement of his death came at first light: Carène Thibaut-Mezino, 38, succumbed to his injuries during the night. This nurse, mother of two children, was stabbed Monday, shortly before 1:30 p.m., while she was changing in the locker room. She was about to take up her service in the “medicine and health” unit of the CHU de Reims, where she had worked for ten years. A medical secretary was also seriously injured.
The suspect, a 59-year-old man, was taken into custody on Monday evening. The investigation, opened for “assassination” and “attempted assassination”, was entrusted to the central police station in Reims.
“Abused in psychiatry”
According to the first elements of the investigation, Franck F., 59, “seems to have acted without apparent motive, especially since he did not have an appointment in this service”, indicated Matthieu Bourrette, the prosecutor of the Republic of Reims. While the investigations are only at their beginnings, it is the profile of a man with a heavy psychiatric past that is gradually taking shape.
Arrested a few minutes after the tragedy as he tried to flee, he would have, according to our information, declared in the midst of incoherent remarks “resenting the hospital environment”. According to the intervention report of the police officers who carried out his arrest, the madman indicated that he wanted “revenge” after having been “mistreated in psychiatry”. He admitted to having stabbed “nurses three or four times”.
Already known for a knife attack
The prosecutor confirmed in a press release that the man “seems to be suffering from severe disorders and has been the subject of a reinforced curatorship for several years”. It is because of these psychiatric disorders that the suspect was the subject, in June 2022, of a dismissal for “criminal irresponsibility” in a case of “aggravated violence” strangely similar. Also according to our information, in June 2017, the man attacked four people with a knife, including supervisory and medical staff, in a reception and integration establishment for people with disabilities south of Châlons-en- Champagne (Marnes). One of them had been seriously injured.
The case was not closed for all that: the investigating chamber of the Reims Court of Appeal was to “very soon” look into the file, “to rule on the security measures likely to be taken” , said the public prosecutor. The suspect’s custody continues.