Toulouse: Strangled then beaten with a knife “I concentrate to survive”
In July 2019, a mother returned home to Toulouse. She walked with a young man before being very violently attacked. This doctor recounts those long minutes when his life didn’t matter much.
“In a fraction of a second, I no longer had the same person in front of me. I saw it in his eyes. A look of madness, hatred in his eyes. He grabbed my neck and strangled me. He m ‘ dragged to the ground. I think I passed out for a few seconds. I can’t remember the stab wounds.”
At the helm of the Haute-Garonne Assize Court, this 39-year-old woman recounts almost without trembling “her nightmare”, on the night of July 17 to 18, 2019. An outing to the restaurant and, on the way back, these long minutes when on the ground in a street in the Raisin district, in Toulouse, around 3 a.m., she felt her blood spurt from her neck. “I got a pressure point and tried to call for help. But if I screamed, the blood came out stronger. I tried to dose. The night was clear, a beautiful summer night. I didn’t want to die like that…”
“He was nice. I wanted to help him”
The jurors, five women and a man, do not take their eyes off this mother of two children. In the box of the Haute-Garonne Assize Court, Diarra Fofana, 21, listens, very calm. This Malian had left his native country before crossing North Africa two years earlier. On her way home on foot, “I needed to walk, to take my mind off things”, the young woman met her near the bus station.
“It was the time of the war in Syria. We talked a lot about migrants. I wanted to act. When I saw him, I thought he was a kid. He was nice. I wanted to help him. The closer I got to the house, the more I thought it was a bit crazy to bring him home, with my children, my husband. I made it up, I told him that I didn’t have my keys, that I had to climb… That’s when it twisted.”
After the attack, this man disappeared. He was arrested two days later, still near Matabiau station. At the hospital, his victim began “to come out of the coma”. “During the attack, my neighbors came to my aid. I indicated how to do a pressure point. I am concentrating on surviving. It was only once in the fire ambulance that I thought it stung me a little…” Another injury. The blade had also hit the liver. “Eight wounds in total”, recalls his lawyer, Me Emeline Petitgirard.
“I said to myself I will not get out of it”
Arrived in the emergency room of the Purpan hospital, still conscious, the victim identifies everyone. She worked. “When I saw the doctor on duty, I was happy. She’s super strong. She did a quick ultrasound. I had blood in my stomach. I heard her say: she’s having a dab! My heart was malfunctioning. I said to myself: it’s over, I won’t get out of it. She did a puncture of my pericardium. I was conscious. If she put me to sleep, I would die… What pain!”
A cardiologist then crossed Toulouse “like crazy. They redid a puncture in the block. And they sutured me, twice. I don’t remember that. They told me that.” We guess a smile. “I woke up in intensive care, in Rangueil. I recognized the air vents of the hospital. I understood that I had not dreamed”. The long rehabilitation, the pains which persist, the anxieties which invade, the judicial investigation which worries, so many new complicated stages.
“And today, how are you?” worries President Michel Huyette. “Physically better but psychologically, it’s still difficult. I have flashes almost every night, the aggression…”
Verdict expected on Wednesday.