UA man, arrested Tuesday evening on a train in Toulon, is suspected of having killed a homeless man in Lyon by hitting him with a concrete block, of having seriously injured a homeless man in Rotterdam and of having committed three other homicides, in Evry, Dijon and Strasbourg.
He presented himself during his arrest as a 32-year-old Cameroonian subject to an obligation to leave French territory (OQTF), according to a police source.
He is suspected of having committed the homicides and the attempted homicide “with the same modus operandi”, according to another police source.
According to another source, he only attacked homeless people and the known crimes spanned the last few weeks.
Tuesday evening, the railway police were called after the attack on a young woman on board a train. Its author was arrested at Toulon station.
“After checking the file of wanted persons, they realized that he was the subject of an arrest warrant issued by an investigating judge in Evry,” the prosecutor of Evry told AFP. Toulon Samuel Finielz.
“The man has been placed in detention and measures will be taken so that he is transferred to the ordering investigating judge”, or to Evry, he added, without giving further details.
Analyzes, particularly of DNA, are now underway to determine whether he is indeed the author of these crimes, according to another judicial source.
“Big tile”
In Lyon, a homeless man of Moldovan nationality was discovered dead Monday morning with a large wound on his head, a bloody concrete block next to him.
A CCTV camera filmed someone hitting him in the head. An investigation into murder has been opened.
On the night of November 4 to 5, a homeless man was attacked in the same way in Rotterdam. The scene was also filmed.
In a wanted notice, published on the internet, the Dutch police released an image of a dark-skinned man, aged around thirty, wearing a black raincoat, blue pants and shoes with orange laces. “This man seriously injured a homeless man this week with a large tile,” she wrote.
He was then located on board an international train heading to Belgium.
After the Toulon arrest, Dutch police said they were “investigating whether this is the suspect linked to the Rotterdam attack”. “At this stage, we cannot confirm it,” its spokesperson Janine Tuinfort told AFP.
