A Frenchman committed suicide by throwing himself out of his third-floor apartment window when a bailiff arrived to tell him he was being evicted for not paying his rent, police said Tuesday.
The 59-year-old died on the way to hospital after making the leap on Monday from his home in Cugnaux in southwestern France.
His apartment building is managed by an organization that specializes in social housing.
They had sent the tenant numerous letters and tried to help him resolve the large debts he had run up and to pay the several months of rent he owed, according to a local newspaper.
Police said they have opened an investigation into the death and prosecutors ordered an autopsy.
Sick prisoners will be allowed to request assisted suicide in Switzerland although the modalities still have to be worked out, prison system officials said on Thursday.
The issue has come to the fore following a request made in 2018 by a convict behind bars for life, which exposed a legal vacuum in a country that has long been at the forefront of the global right-to-die debate.
Switzerland's cantons, which implement prison sentences, have agreed “on the principle that assisted suicide should be possible inside prisons,” the Conference of Cantonal Departments of Justice and Police said.
Conference director Roger Schneeberger told AFP that there were still differences between cantons on how assisted suicides could be carried out in prisons and a group of experts would issue recommendations by November.
Swiss law generally allows assisted suicide if the person commits the lethal act themselves — meaning doctors cannot administer deadly injections, for example — and the person consistently and independently articulates a wish to die.
Organisations that support assisted suicide also apply their own procedures, which are more robust than the legal requirements and sometimes require the person who is requesting it to have a serious illness.
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