bloodrayne
12-21-2004, 03:52 AM
Nurse Beheaded In Hospital Carnage
PAU, France -- Police are questioning four drifters and a former psychiatric patient in a French hospital bloodbath that ended with one nurse beheaded and another stabbed to death, officials said Sunday.
Horrified hospital workers arriving for the Saturday morning shift found the two bodies in the geriatric psychiatry ward of the main hospital in this southwestern town.
Wounds on the corpses indicated the murderer probably used a sword or machete, police sources said.
Health Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy was due to hold an emergency meeting in Paris to review security in hospitals. Pau hospital complained to him during his urgent visit on Saturday of mounting insecurity there following staff cuts.
"The people who have been questioned seem to belong to a marginal mileu and be addicted to alcohol," Pau prosecutor Eric Maurel said.
Sources close to the investigation said four men, all local drifters in their 30s known to law enforcement authorities, were taken in for questioning after an anonymous call to the police.
The fifth was a former patient with violent tendencies who left the hospital only last Monday. "He has nothing to do with the others," the source said. "The hospital staff brought him to the attention of the police."
"We are not ruling out any theories, we're checking everything," Maurel told a news conference on Saturday. "We cannot say whether these persons are directly linked with the event."
The two nurses were aged 40 and 48, both married and mothers of children. Their ward houses Alzheimer's patients and all were accounted for on Saturday morning, medical sources said.
A window was smashed but it was not immediately clear if the murderer used it to enter or leave the building, which is surrounded by a large park.
"This is unspeakable, scandalous and horrible," Douste-Blazy said on Saturday after rushing to Pau from his nearby hometown of Lourdes in the region just north of the Pyrenees Mountains. "It was certainly someone very sick who did this."
"I've been the mayor here for 34 years and we've never seen anything like this," Mayor Andre Labarrere told the daily Le Parisien.
PAU, France -- Police are questioning four drifters and a former psychiatric patient in a French hospital bloodbath that ended with one nurse beheaded and another stabbed to death, officials said Sunday.
Horrified hospital workers arriving for the Saturday morning shift found the two bodies in the geriatric psychiatry ward of the main hospital in this southwestern town.
Wounds on the corpses indicated the murderer probably used a sword or machete, police sources said.
Health Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy was due to hold an emergency meeting in Paris to review security in hospitals. Pau hospital complained to him during his urgent visit on Saturday of mounting insecurity there following staff cuts.
"The people who have been questioned seem to belong to a marginal mileu and be addicted to alcohol," Pau prosecutor Eric Maurel said.
Sources close to the investigation said four men, all local drifters in their 30s known to law enforcement authorities, were taken in for questioning after an anonymous call to the police.
The fifth was a former patient with violent tendencies who left the hospital only last Monday. "He has nothing to do with the others," the source said. "The hospital staff brought him to the attention of the police."
"We are not ruling out any theories, we're checking everything," Maurel told a news conference on Saturday. "We cannot say whether these persons are directly linked with the event."
The two nurses were aged 40 and 48, both married and mothers of children. Their ward houses Alzheimer's patients and all were accounted for on Saturday morning, medical sources said.
A window was smashed but it was not immediately clear if the murderer used it to enter or leave the building, which is surrounded by a large park.
"This is unspeakable, scandalous and horrible," Douste-Blazy said on Saturday after rushing to Pau from his nearby hometown of Lourdes in the region just north of the Pyrenees Mountains. "It was certainly someone very sick who did this."
"I've been the mayor here for 34 years and we've never seen anything like this," Mayor Andre Labarrere told the daily Le Parisien.