One of the five hostages, held for several hours in Arles prison, Friday January 3, speaks. Alberto, a 54-year-old prison guard, is still in shock from what he experienced. A doctor and three nurses were also held by an inmate, armed with a bladed weapon, in the prison infirmary.
When the 37-year-old prisoner arrives at the infirmary for treatment, Alberto passes him through a metal detector, but nothing rings. “There is nothing that tells me that he has anything,” the supervisor tells RTL. Then the inmate went to the toilet. “It’s there, when he turns, that I see that he is armed with large spikes wedged between his fingers”continues Alberto. According to the latter, the inmate barricaded himself with “a medical bed” to block the door.
The supervisor reviews the individual’s behavior. “There were phases where he was very angry”remembers the fifty-year-old. “It was going a bit in all directions. We tried to talk with him, (…) he sometimes got angry and so we had to bring him back down.”
“If it was another supervisor than me, he would have crashed it”
The doctor, a young mother, was first released. “Can you release the psychiatrist? She has a little baby to pick up”the hostages asked, according to Alberto. At first, the inmate was opposed to it, but they eventually convinced him: “We told him: ‘Show us that you want to do something and that we can go your way too.’
Raid, who is present, continues to negotiate with the hostage taker: “The negotiator came down and told him that he had good news and that he was waiting for a document to make him leave.” The inmate returns his first punch, leaves and returns the second. “And there, the Raid intervenes, they control itthey put him on the ground and then it’s gone,” explains the supervisor.
Alberto is still in shock but thinks that a tragedy has been avoided: “The detainee told us that if it was another supervisor than me, he would have planted it. […] Somewhere, luckily it was me.”
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