French cop stabbed to death by naked attacker

A French policeman has been left clinically dead after being stabbed through the eye by a psychiatric patient who had been released into the community, a public prosecutor said Friday.

Lorient prosecutor Alexis Bouroz told AFP the officer, a 49-year-old married father of two, was in a "state of clinical death", after being attacked while responding to a call to investigate loud screaming at a house in the town in Brittany, western France.

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As soon as the officer knocked on the door, the 35-year-old resident charged out naked and plunged a knife through his eye and deep into his skull.

One of the two other policemen with the victim was slightly injured while a third officer was able to overcome the assailant.

The perpetrator of the attack was described as having a long history of psychiatric disorders and had been incarcerated in a clinic near Paris for 18 months up to July 2011.

In Lorient he was being treated as an outpatient.

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Interior Minister Manuel Valls expressed his condolences to the officer's family. "It shows once again how difficult and dangerous the job of the police is and, more than ever, how much they deserve the support of the nation," he said.

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