The incident did not cause any injuries but it calls out so much it is unprecedented. A 43-year-old man started two fires on Monday in the grounds of the François-Quesnay hospital center, in Mantes-la-Jolie (Yvelines). Arrested the day before in flagrante delicto of voluntary degradation at the entrance of a bank, the forty-something had been transported to hospital the next morning following a psychiatric examination. “From the moment when discernment is abolished, it is no longer our responsibility, it escapes us completely”, indicates a police source.
At the end of the day on Monday, around 7 p.m., the situation got out of hand. “During his hospitalization in psychiatry there was a lack of supervision and he left”, explains the same source. The man first sets fire to a garbage can in the emergency room, evacuating patients for about twenty minutes. He also started a fire in a bone densitometry room in the radiology department.
This last room of 15 square meters is completely destroyed, including the expensive scanner which made it possible to carry out the X-rays of the patients of the Mantais basin. However, the incident would have “no impact on the functioning of the hospital center”, according to initial findings.
Steps have been taken with insurers to assess the extent of the damage. “We thank and congratulate the hospital staff and the security guards for their exemplary action, with professionalism, collaboration and composure, thus preventing the disaster from having consequences that could have been serious”, underlines the management of the hospital in a message. sent to the teams this Tuesday morning.
“In these cases, the procedure is no longer judicial but health”
Arrested a second time following the arson attacks, the arsonist was again placed in police custody at the Mantes-la-Jolie police station on Monday evening… Before being escorted back to the François-Quesnay center around 9 pm, still for the same reasons.
“We have very good relations with the psychiatric center of the hospital, the team is doing what it can,” continues the source close to the file. But it is a real social problem because there is an increase in psychiatric illnesses with certain dangerous cases. Last week, we had four in custody who ended up in hospital. In these cases, the procedure is no longer judicial but health. “
According to our information, the individual would still be taken care of on Tuesday while awaiting the results of a second psychiatric examination. A mandatory procedure to confirm the first diagnosis. His fate is no longer in the hands of the police. Originally from Italy, he had already been the subject of a forced internment in Cherbourg (Manche) a few months earlier.
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