CCTV footage is chilling. Travelers are waiting on the edge of a platform in Brussels, when a man, wearing a black T-shirt and bag, voluntarily pushes, with both hands, a woman towards the rails as the metro arrives. The woman falls heavily and owes her life to the driver who stopped the machine in its tracks.
The slightly injured victim and the shocked subway driver were both briefly hospitalized.
The suspect of this attack, arousing great emotion in the country, is a 23-year-old Frenchman and was arrested the same evening in another metro station. He was presented on Saturday to an investigating judge who charged him with “attempted murder”, then placed in detention, announced on Monday the parquet floor of the Belgian capital.
Identified by Belgian media as “Benjamin P.”, the young man, originally from the Nancy region, must undergo a psychiatric expertise in the very next few days, said the prosecution. According to a source close to the investigation, he was already known to the police in France for “acts of theft and relating to narcotics”, and has no known domicile in Belgium. He would have no connection with the victim.