A ‘disturbed and violent’ man has been arrested a month after video emerged of a woman being punched in Paris.
Marie Laguerre, 22, was shown in CCTV footage being struck across the face in the French capital after telling a man not to wolf-whistle her.
The 25-year-old suspect, named as Firas M, had been receiving psychiatric treatment at a hospital and was arrested as he left the unit, according to French media.
Outrage erupted in France after a man attacked a young woman, Marie Laguerre (pictured in the red dress), when she responded to lewd noises he made at her outside a Paris cafe
Laguerre, 22, was punched by a passer by (left) when she told him to ‘shut up’ after he wolf-whistled at her
Investigators traced him using his phone number and found that he was in the hospital as part of a separate judicial case.
He has been described as disturbed and violent and ‘capable of hitting his mother’, according to Le Parisien.
Laguerre, a student, wrote on Facebook last month that she was returning home when a man started making lewd comments. She told him to ‘shut up’ and kept walking away, while the man went in the opposite direction.
In surveillance video provided by the cafe, the man is then seen grabbing an ashtray from a table on the cafe’s patio and throwing it at her. He then returns and strikes Laguerre across the face.
She filed a complaint with police and later posted the video, writing that ‘we must no longer keep quiet’.
Laguerre has received praise from the French public and abroad for her courage in standing up to her aggressor. She has created a website ‘Nous Toutes Harcelement’ (We are all harassed) for other victims of sexual harassment to recount their stories
Since her video went up on Facebook, Laguerre has received messages from around the world from women sharing their own experiences as well as from men offering their support.
Paris prosecutors have opened an inquiry following the posting of the video of the assault on her.
In the days that followed, France outlawed sexual harassment on the streets, leaving cat-callers and aggressively lecherous individuals facing potential on-the-spot fines of more than £650.