British man, 49, charged with attempted murder in France after 'attack on 60-year-old was foiled by neighbour'
A 49-year-old British man has been charged with attempted murder in Nice after an attack that saw a 60-year-old woman critically injured.
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The alleged attack, which was thwarted by one of the woman's neighbours, was said to have taken place just after midnight on Sunday in the French city.
Police are currently investigating an allegation of rape against the man, who has not been named.
Authorities arrested the man after Yuri Lebedev, 33, a Russian immigrant, said he heard a woman shout “stop, stop” from a flat across the courtyard at his apartment building on Avenue Georges Clemenceau.
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A police official said that officers found the attacker "being held down by a neighbour, who had heard the woman screaming inside an apartment block.”
Mr Lebedev told Nice Matin newspaper: “I went out on the balcony and saw a man on the floor who was stabbing someone in the head. I ran downstairs and across the yard. It was a man I’ve seen several times at the foot of the building. He threatened me in English, saying three or four times, ‘If you approach, I’ll kill you’.”
Lebedev added: “I heard the woman’s voice. I circled round and managed to grab the hand holding the knife and managed to disarm him. I elbowed him in the face and threw him on the ground … I got the knife away from him.”
“She was badly injured. She said she was dying, she was losing consciousness. She was stabbed for nothing,” Lebedev said, adding that she tried to staunch the bleeding.
“This is not something you see every day in Nice,” he said. The attacker was “very odd, unbalanced”.
The suspect is also said to have roamed Nice knocking on doors claiming he had been robbed in the week before the alleged attack.