Marvin, a 26-year-old officer with the national police force, jumped into the River Seine without hesitation to help a woman who was attempting to take her own life. She was eventually pulled from the water by a fire service diver.
The facts
It was around 7 pm on Wednesday on the Quais Aristide Briand in Triel-sur-Seine, in the Yvelines, when witnesses saw a woman in her forties throw herself into the Seine and let the current carry her away.
The police officer from Triel-sur-Seine, having been alerted to the incident, immediately went into action upon arriving at the scene in a police patrol car.
"She was about 300 metres from where I dived. All you could see was her head sticking out of the water. The problem was the seaweed, which was stopping me from getting any further. I had to swim on my back for a bit at first,” the civil servant told our colleagues at the newspaper *Le Parisien*.
Whilst Marvin is rescuing the victim, his colleagues follow him to the bank to keep him in sight whilst they wait for the fire service divers.
The arrival of the divers
The diver, Staff Sergeant Matthieu, took over from the police officer. Wearing a suitable wetsuit, the diver easily brought the victim back to the shore, where the woman admitted to having drunk alcohol mixed with medication. Suffering from mild hypothermia, she was taken to Poissy Hospital.
Acknowledgements
As soon as she was discharged from hospital, the woman in her forties went to the police station where Marvin works to thank him. “It’s not every day that we’re thanked for our work: it’s always nice. I was particularly pleased to see that she was in a different frame of mind, ready to make a fresh start.”