As soon as his health condition “is sufficiently stabilized, he will be interviewed again,” said the public prosecutor.
The custody of the inmate who took five people hostage on Friday at Arles prison (Bouches-du-Rhône) was interrupted on Saturday, after a psychiatric expert concluded that his hospitalization in a psychiatric unit was necessary, according to a press release from the Tarascon prosecutor.
The psychiatric expert concluded “to a decompensation of personality disorders having the effect of making him dangerous for himself or for others” and recommended “constrained hospitalization in a specialized environment”said the prosecutor of the Republic of Tarascon, Laurent Gumbau, in a statement transmitted to AFP.
This 37-year-old Guyanese national took four medical staff and a prison guard hostage for five hours on Friday, in the care unit of the Arles central prison where he sequestered them under threat of a homemade weapon , before surrendering without causing any injuries.
The man seemed to have «mobile» to change establishment, but “there was no specific, written request, as prisoners can make to the prison administration”the Tarascon prosecutor emphasized on Friday.
Unstable but without established pathology
The custody of this inmate, who was serving an 18-year prison sentence at Arles central prison for rape at gunpoint, was lifted at 6:30 p.m., the magistrate said, “and complete admission without consent implemented (…) at the specialized hospital center of Montfavet” (Vaucluse). “He could ultimately be taken care of at the beginning of next week within the specially designed hospital unit (UHSA) in Marseille”he added.
As soon as his health status “will be sufficiently stabilized, he will be interviewed again as part of a resumption of the police custody measure”specified Laurent Gumbau. Several sources highlighted on Friday the psychiatric disorders of the detainee, described as “unstable”without any pathology being formally established.
The police prefect of Bouches-du-Rhône, Pierre-Edouard Colliex, had described this man, known “for acts of violence, particularly in detention”of “very dangerous”welcoming a way out “without use of force”at the end of a “fairly long and quite complicated negotiation”.
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