Narbonne: Victim of illness, a homeless man well known to associations died in the street

His name was Antonin and he spoke French very well. Without a fixed address well known to residents of the hospital district and Narbonne associations, his lifeless body was found this Wednesday morning around 6:30 am near the Medical Guard House.

The man in his 40s reportedly collapsed in the street after feeling unwell, according to CCTV footage. Dispatched to the scene, the emergency services could not do anything to resuscitate him and found him dead.

Originally from Eastern Europe, the man had already suffered a heart attack shortly before. The evening before, two groups who were marauding had gone to meet him when negative temperatures were recorded during the night.

"We went around 9:30 p.m., he was sleeping soundly in his usual place, near an ATM, with a colleague. He had his shopping cart and had wrapped himself in boxes. We tried to wake him up but he was grumbling so we left a bag of food for them both", testify Elise and Jessy, two volunteers very saddened after the announcement of his disappearance.

Another group then passed around 11 p.m. "He was very drunk but he seemed well protected and safe. Finally we learned this morning that he had certainly died on his way to his usual meeting point, near the Plan Saint-Paul bowling alley", adds Benoît Perez, head of the Band of Friends association and one of the last people to have crossed paths with Antonin before the street took him away.

A man "marked by life"

"It's been five years since I started marauding and I've always known him. He was always very nice and very polite, even when he was he was marked by life. He was also very protective of us. He was a man with a big heart, we never had any problems with him", recalls Elise, a volunteer at Narbonne in solidarity during all this time.

"He was kind of one of our favorites. If he had already found something to eat or had what he needed, he didn't ask us for anything and left it for the others. We had already offered him a solution. accommodation but he wanted to keep this freedom with his dog", recounts in turn Patrick Santamaria, head of Narbonne solidaire.

"He died of precariousness. He was very tired and the cold did not help his health. It is not normal to die at this age in the street when another homeless person has already been buried only a month ago. One more, it's becoming commonplace, it seems normal", laments finally Benoît Perez.

At Narbonne Solidaires as at the Band of Friends, around sixty volunteers work almost every day with at least twenty homeless people in Narbonne.