Double world athletics champion Eunice Barber, crowned in the heptathlon in 1999 and the long distance in 2003, was slightly injured in the face Monday evening after an altercation with another traveler aboard a Paris commuter train, we learned on Tuesday from a police source.
A little before 11:00 p.m., the former athlete boarded a Transilien in Franconville (Val-d’Oise) heading to Gare du Nord, in Paris. Eunice Barber, 49, then asked “a drunken traveler” to speak less loudly on the phone and received “two blows to the face” in return, causing a slight injury to her “right cheekbone”, according to the police source. She filed a complaint at the police station. The man, aged 43, was arrested when the train arrived at Gare du Nord before being taken into police custody, the same source added.
Eunice Barber already had dealings with the law in 2006. She was arrested near the Stade de France by the police when she had just driven her vehicle onto a prohibited lane. The champion had filed a complaint against two agents for “slanderous denunciation and forgery in public documents”, claiming to have been slapped, humiliated and insulted by a police officer while admitting to having “bitten” him to protect herself.
His complaint was dismissed and the prosecutor indicted him for “refusal to comply, endangering the lives of others, insults and violence against persons holding public authority”. One of the police officers claimed that Barber had rushed him with his vehicle and the other maintained that the athlete had dragged him several meters with his arm stuck in the passenger compartment. The case ended with a fine of 5,000 euros for rebellion and contempt by the Bobigny criminal court. The other complaints filed by Barber, for “aggravated intentional violence”, “threats” and “violation of the secrecy of the investigation”, were the subject of dismissals.
SEE ALSO – The funny goal against his camp by Formose Mendy with Lorient against Monaco on March 17 (2-2)
