The head of a French LGBTQ+ organization has been hospitalized following a brutal attack in the heart of Paris’ LGBTQ+ neighborhood by an assailant who allegedly shouted anti-gay slurs.
FLAG! President Pierre Picavet, who is also a police officer, said that he was in the Marais neighborhood late on Saturday, leaving a bar, when a young man charged at him “to scare me.” Picavet told Le Parisien that he wasn’t hit that first time but that the young man came back. Picavet asked him what he wanted, and he allegedly said, “Dirty queer, dirty queer, I’m going to kill you.”
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Picavet said that he identified himself as a police officer and asked the young man to calm down, but the young man instead became more upset and brandished a bottle.
“I was bleeding a lot,” Picavet said, explaining that the assailant hit him at the top of his head with the bottle. After a struggle, Picavet said that he bit the assailant in the face and then lost consciousness. The assailant then kicked him in the head.
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He said he woke up later while in the paramedics’ van, being taken to the hospital. He said that he suffered multiple fractures in his face, including in his sinus and around his eye.
“It hurts so, so much,” he said. “Today I’m leaving the hospital, and tomorrow I’m going to the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital for maxillofacial surgery. I’m at risk of meningitis because there’s a pool of blood in my brain.”
“LGBTQIphobic violence is still a problem,” Paris Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire (NFP) posted on social media, calling what happened to Picavet an “odious attack.”
“They strike, violate, and seek to impose fear where every person should be able to live and love freely. We will not surrender our streets to hate. Paris will remain a refuge, a rampart, and a city of freedom for all.”
Picavet said that earlier in the evening, he had actually run into the suspect, who was walking around the neighborhood in a bizarre manner.
Police arrested the suspect shortly after the attack. Picavet said they found him easily because he had stolen Picavet’s phone. He is being held in downtown Paris as the investigation into the attack as a hate crime continues.
The suspect, whose name has not been made public, is 20 years old and from the Saint-Denis suburb of Paris. Police believe that he tried to attack a taxi driver earlier on Saturday evening with a bottle and that he was drunk at the time of the attack. He has no prior criminal record.
“We condemn this unacceptable violence,” Picavet’s organization, FLAG!, posted on social media. FLAG! is an LGBTQ+ association for employees of the Ministries of Interior and Justice. “We thank the police for quickly catching the suspect, and we have every confidence in the justice system to investigate and deliver a response commensurate with the gravity of the situation.”
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