Hero who stepped in to save woman being strangled to death loses £5,000 | World | News

A hero has told how he tackled a man to save a woman from being beaten to death.

Lawyer and academic Eoin Campbell said: “I had to beat him terribly. He wouldn’t let go. He was killing him.” Irish Mirror.

He also revealed that the woman had lost €6,000 (£5,200) in earnings due to an injury she suffered while fighting for her life, and that French authorities had rejected her claim for compensation.

“This issue put me in the red, and I think the state should move me back into the black,” he says.

Mr Campbell, 43, was speaking following a French state body’s decision in November 2022 to deny him compensation.

He stepped in to save the woman from certain death near Lyon, France; an event that turned the university lecturer into a local hero.

However, when he struck his attacker up to eight times, he suffered a serious injury to his dominant right hand; This meant he could not work for months, as well as thousands of euros in lost overtime and additional income.

But although he applied to a national fund set up to compensate victims of crime, a panel rejected him. The decision, made by a panel last week, horrified Mr Campbell, of Warrenpoint, Co Down.

Mr Campbell, a former Irish lawyer who moved to Lyon in 2008, believes the French state should compensate him for the losses he suffered while saving the life of a young woman. He says: “I want them to take me back to zero. I didn’t want a new Ferrari. I just said, ‘Look, this cost me a lot of money. Here’s a reasonable estimate of what it would cost, can I get this back?’ I said. And they said no.”

Mr Campbell, who has worked as a data privacy officer and law lecturer at the Université catholique de Lyon since his move, describes the horrific incident that took place in early November 2022.

After getting off the tram in Villeurbanne, he was walking the 400 meters to his apartment and decided to take a shortcut through a car park. There he noticed a man walking in front of him.

“She was walking in the same direction as me, but she was to my left and in front of me, and a young woman was approaching. She came walking and I can see her moving directly towards her,” he recalls.

She continues: “He starts talking to him. I’m starting to pay more and more attention because everything about this guy is weird. It doesn’t seem right.”

Police reports later revealed that the man was wearing a flowing dress but had no pants, jacket or shoes, even though it was November. What happened next led Mr Campbell and a passing Croatian to intervene and save the woman.

He says: “He’s talking to her. He’s quite close to her, and he seems quite frightened of her. Then he grabs her by the shoulders. He asks her, ‘Madame, do you know this man?’ I shouted.

“And just as she was saying ‘no’ he slapped her. It was an open hand, but with real force. He hit her hard, very hard. Then he started choking her with his bare hands.”

Mr. Campbell immediately rushed to help. He says: “I started running towards him.

“And when I got there, I heard another man, a Croatian boy, yelling. He was entering the parking lot from the other side. We ran together. But when we got there, your man was behind him and was strangling him with his arms.”

Mr Campbell, who played GAA and boxed in his youth, says he knew he had to intervene physically to save the woman.

He says: “He was killing her. He was strangling her. If you had put a gun to his head instead of hitting him, you would have had to pull the trigger.”

“There was no fear there. The eyes were gone. You couldn’t negotiate with him. You couldn’t reason with him. He was trying to kill him. “I boxed when I was young and I was still hitting the punching bag, so my first thought was to punch him, but I couldn’t get close to him the way he was.

“We’re trying to get his arms off of him. Then he jumps backwards and knocks her down on top of himself. So we fall on top of him, I’m yelling at him (in French), ‘Let him go, let him go.’ We’re trying to tear his arms off because his face, his face is still right in front of him at this point, it’s almost impossible to get to him.”

“Then the Croatian guy managed to wrestle one of his arms off and actually pinned one arm down. That exposed the side of his face. And from there I was able to lean in and beat him up.”

“I had to beat him really bad because he wouldn’t let go. He wouldn’t let go.”

Asked if he believed the man would kill the woman, Mr Campbell said: “One hundred percent.”

We then ask the attacker how many times he punched him and he says: “I’d say seven or eight.

“I hurt him with the second last punch. I could see it looked like he had been given an electric shock to his face. “On the last throw he let go and we had to hold him down.

“He was ranting about earthquakes and the end of the world. It was all stray stuff.

“We laid him down on the ground. The young lady stood up. She was crying her eyes out. We had her crucified on the ground. She was struggling around and I put my knee on her chest. She called the police.”

He said the police arrived quickly and he didn’t realize why until the next morning.

Mr Campbell explained: “I think he had already attacked five women that night. He was in a rage and they were already looking for him in the neighbourhood.”

Among his victims was an elderly woman who fell into a coma due to her injuries.

Mr Campbell also revealed that he injured his hand while punching the attacker, who was later admitted to a secure mental health facility.

He explained: “I injured myself with the last punch. I was aiming for his cheekbone but the movement of his head meant I missed slightly and I caught him with the underside of his hand.”

The academic admitted that he could not immediately realize the severity of his injury.

He admitted: “I never went to the doctor straight away, which was a mistake.

“I didn’t see my hand until the new year. At first it was swollen and I didn’t think it was that big of a deal.

“I was used to injuries because I played GAA and boxed, the swelling didn’t feel that different back then.

“But when the swelling subsided, my hand was in terrible shape. Movements were distorted and looked out of place.

“I was home for Christmas and the family said to me, ‘What’s wrong with your hand, you need to deal with it.’ It started to hurt more and more.”

When he returned to Lyon in January 2023, after several medical consultations it was determined that the tendons in his dominant right hand had ruptured.

This meant he could still teach, but there were no grades for exams at the end of the term. After notifying his workplace, they suggested he take medical leave for two months.

He explains: “I had to take two months off and that brought me into the summer. During those two months, I was normally doing extra work. I was missing my summer extras. I was missing my overtime.

“And you would have a series of interviews for incoming students, and since it was the end of the semester, it was all overtime. That’s where I started losing money.”

He estimates the injury cost him around €6,000, including having to re-sit a data protection course he was enrolled in at the time of the incident and lost lecture time at another university.

Moreover, he could not drive and had to rely on taxis, and cooking was also forbidden for several months.

In September this year, Mr Campbell sought compensation through a lawsuit from the fond de warrante, a government fund for victims of crime.

However, his claim was rejected by the three-person panel on the grounds that he was not attacked by the attacker he encountered.

He says: “I wanted the money back that I lost while taking the case. I wanted this. It cost me and I was trying to get compensation.”

He also said: “According to the legislation, they say I don’t owe anything because I’m not a victim. I wasn’t attacked. He didn’t attack me. I was quite frank about it in my police statement, I said, ‘Look, he didn’t attack me. He never tried to hit me.’

“They use that to say, ‘Look, you’re not a victim.’ I had a moral obligation to help that young lady, and I got hurt doing it.

“All I’m saying is that the state should protect me, too. I protected that young lady, and I want the state to protect me, too. I shouldn’t suffer such financial blows.”

He insists he has no regrets about stepping in despite his difficulties. Mr Campbell says: “I can’t regret it. I know I should probably be proud of it, but I just can’t.”

“The incident itself was so disgusting that when you look back you can’t feel good about it. You can’t. It was terrible. And you see such a young woman and he destroyed her.”

“The way he brought her down, I just feel disgusted by the incident. Trying to extract some kind of pride from it doesn’t work. I can’t feel it.”