Islam Merabet, a 24-year-old Algerian, saved the life of a man who wanted to commit suicide in the metro in Paris. His fiancée hopes that his “heroic act” will allow him to obtain papers because he is currently in an irregular situation.
“To this day, I’m still shocked.” Islam Merabet, 24, saved the life of a man who wanted to commit suicide at Raspail station, on line 6 of the Paris metro, in the 14th arrondissement, as revealed by Le Parisien. That day, as he goes to work, the young man who lives in Essonne is on the phone with his partner when he hears a woman screaming and sees a man who has descended onto the metro rails. He intervenes immediately.
“I jumped straight on the rails. I carried him, but he didn’t want to,” he describes at the microphone of BFM Paris Île-de-France.
“He went straight to the metro”
While the man continues to “scream ‘I want to die, I want to die'”, Islam Merabet explains that he “hears the metro, on the other side, (which) is arriving”. “He left directly towards the metro (…) Before he arrived towards the metro, I caught up with him a second time” he says.
The man struggles, the metro brakes in time and Islam manages to lift him onto the platform, without realizing that he himself has put his life in danger. Electrical installations without protective sheaths wind along rails.
“When I got on the platform, I started to shake, my chest hurt,” describes the young man who emerged from this episode with only a few marks on his chest, after bumping into the platform. while hoisting himself up.
His partner wants “him to be regularized”
His fiancée, Angeline Basikjian, who experienced the scene from her phone, today wants “this heroic act to be recognized and regularized.” Islam Merabet, an Algerian national, is currently in an irregular situation.
“Today, for the moment, he is not regularized so it is complicated, because I am disabled, so I cannot work much. And since his situation does not allow him to “Having a permanent job is really complicated for us,” explains the young woman.
The couple sent a letter to the RATP to obtain an incident report and hope that this can be used in their application for a residence permit.
Chloé Berthod with Glenn Gillet
