Nanterre: Prison terminus for SNCF passenger who locked himself in train toilet

Eventful stopover in Redon. A forty-year-old from Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine) was sentenced to prison term at the end of June 2024 by the Rennes criminal court after threatening and hitting an SNCF controller.

“Smell of cannabis” and vodka

On June 16, Kamel X. had in fact been forced to get off a train traveling between Rennes and Nantes: gendarmes were waiting for him when he arrived in Redon (Ille-et-Vilaine). Around 9 p.m., the 41-year-old man had in fact tried to escape from the SNCF controller: when he arrived in the carriage, he had taken refuge in the toiletsfrom which a “strong smell of cannabis” was emanating.

The controller then asked the man to come out, without success. She forced the door open with her “service keys”, before managing to “dodge” the “kicks” and “a spit” from this stowaway who “drank vodka and smelled of alcohol and drugs,” according to his own words.

Despite his “glassy look” and “unbalanced gait”, Kamel X. had ended up leaving the toilets, promising the conductor to “fuck” her and her “friends”. The woman had therefore finally stopped the train at Redon station.

“I have problems with alcohol”

In police custody, Kamel X. admitted to the insults and said he was “sorry”, a version he maintained before the Rennes criminal court. “I have problems with alcohol”, he explained: that evening, the day of Eid, he had “found himself alone” because of “a lot of family worries”. He had drunk “a bottle of vodka” before to do “things with regret, which land me in prison.”

He nevertheless maintained that he had not struck any “blows” at the SNCF controller. “None of the four people interviewed [des voyageurs] does not report any violence or spitting,” his lawyer also stressed. The fact remains that this marginal person has a long criminal record: he has already been convicted 33 timesfor offences as diverse as they are varied, ranging from narcotics to traffic offences, including “attacks on property” or “public authority”, but also for four “sexual exhibitions”.

He had also been released from prison a few months earlier, in February. Having been hosted since then “by a friend”, he had “planned to move to Brittany for a summer job”: he was actually going “to Biscarosse”, in the Landes, to “pick up a camper van spotted on Leboncoin”.

“Everything has been tried with Mr.the public prosecutor deplored. This is an observation of the failure of justice and society in its mission of integration and reintegration.

In accordance with his demands, Kamel X. was sentenced to eight months in prison. He will also have to pay 100 euros for having travelled without a ticket, and pay 700 euros to the controller in compensation for his “moral prejudice”.

/MJ (PressPepper)

Follow all the news from your favorite cities and media by subscribing to My News.