A new patient fled from the Gérard-Marchant psychiatric hospital in Toulouse on Friday, said the Occitanie Regional Health Agency about this fourth runaway of a dangerous individual in ten days in this city.
This patient still at large, 43 years old, is known for acts of rape. He is the third, in less than two weeks, to escape from this Toulouse psychiatric hospital. “Additional security measures had been requested by the director general of ARS Occitanie in the psychiatric services in Toulouse, to avoid any new patient runaways”, explains the ARS in a press release.
These measures, which directly targeted the Gérard-Marchant hospital and the Purpan university hospital center in Toulouse, involved, among other things, “the securing of entrances and exits” and “the strengthening of patient monitoring”, specifies the institution.
Administrative investigation
Last week, two patients had also run away, before being located a few hours later, and interned again. These two men, suspected of murder, had been considered criminally irresponsible and could not be tried.
The first, a 34-year-old former soldier nicknamed the “cannibal of the Pyrenees”, escaped on January 19, before attacking a 72-year-old woman who was walking her dog in a residential area of Toulouse. He was investigated in 2013 for intentional homicide and acts of cannibalism. The second, aged 48, involved in a homicide in 2010, fled on Sunday before being arrested by the police.
The ARS has announced that it has asked the management of the Marchant hospital to open an administrative investigation and has launched an inspection mission.
Thursday, a third psychiatric patient had escaped from another establishment in Toulouse, the Purpan hospital, before being found a few hours later. In 2017, he deliberately ran into three Chinese female students driving his car.