A West African migrant has been arrested after allegedly pushing a woman in front of an oncoming train in Paris “for no apparent reason” on Friday, leading to the woman’s death.
The Paris prosecutor’s office announced on Saturday that a man has been arrested on accusations of murdering a 52-year-old woman by pushing her in front of a Réseau Express Régional (RER) train at the Cité Universitaire station in the 14th arrondissement of Paris on Friday morning, Le Figaro reports.
When the woman, who was of Algerian heritage and was wearing a hijab at the time, was pushed onto the tracks “for no apparent reason”, she got up, yet she was unable to escape from the oncoming train, which ultimately killed her.
A police source said that upon his arrest, the man claimed that he was “God” and that he “had to kill people”, specifically “weak people”. The source said that there were no immediate links between the alleged murderer and the victim.
According to a report from Le Parisien, the alleged perpetrator, who was born in 1981, was a migrant from the West African nation of Guinea.
The Guinean national successfully fled the train station but was arrested six hours after the killing for attempting to shoplift from a store in the Val-de-Marne suburb of Paris.
At the time of his arrest, he allegedly claimed to have told police that he had a hidden bag full of knives near the Vitry tram station that he intended to use to kill children and elderly people, which he is said to have described as easy prey.
The suspected murderer has since been transferred to a psychiatric facility, with the Paris prosecutor’s office saying: “The continuation of his police custody was considered incompatible with his state of health.”
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