“I am relieved that he is finally arrested, but I tell myself that I escaped the worst, that he could have killed me. » Élise, a 42-year-old from Dijon, is very emotional on the phone this Wednesday morning. Victim of a violent attack at the end of July in Dijon, her attacker would be the man arrested on a train near Toulon on Tuesday evening, as the Dijon public prosecutor, Olivier Caracotch, confirmed to us.
“It rang in my head, like an explosion”
This 32-year-old man is suspected of having killed a homeless man in Lyon on Monday by hitting him with a concrete block and of having carried out other attacks in recent weeks in Évry (Essonne), Strasbourg (Bas-Rhin) and in Rotterdam (Netherlands), according to a police source. And of course, that of Élise, on July 25.
That day, around 2 p.m., Élise, a laboratory nurse in Valmy, leaves work. “I was happy because I was finally on vacation,” she remembers. “I crossed the tram track to get to my car and then it rang in my head, like an explosion. I was wondering what was happening and then I saw a stone on the ground, the back of my head was bloody. »
She turns around and sees a man. “It was just him, I don’t know if he threw the stone at me or hit me directly with it, but I ran up to him, grabbed his hood and asked why he did that,” she says. “But he just punched me in the face, then knocked me to the ground and punched me again until colleagues intervened. »
The nurse is taken to the hospital. She left with ten days of ITT, five stitches in her head and facial injuries. His attacker was filmed by video surveillance and photographed by witnesses. He managed to escape the police by crossing the LiNo on foot.
“I hoped he wouldn’t cause any other victims”
“The suspect had been identified as a man who had recently been the subject of an OQTF (obligation to leave French territory) notified to Dijon,” specifies Olivier Caracotch. “A search warrant was issued against him by the Dijon public prosecutor's office on August 2, 2024.” Although he appears to use several identities, it seems that the man arrested in Toulon is indeed the person sought by the Dijon police officers.
On Wednesday morning, seeing the information about this arrest, “I made the connection with my attack, there were a lot of similarities, and his photo taken in Rotterdam matched my attacker,” she said. “I was hoping that he wouldn't cause any more victims, but when I see that he killed someone, and tried to kill others… He uses the same modus operandi, he hits with stones , I probably dealt with a serial killer. I tell myself that I was lucky in my misfortune. »
