HERO FOUGHT OFF CRAZED CHOKE FIEND IN FRANCE

THIS Irish hero describes how he fought to save a woman from murder - and his bravery has left him thousands of euro out of pocket.

- BY MICHAEL O'TOOLE Crime and Defence Editor

INTERVENED The Rhone area in Lyon where attack happened

“I had to give him a terrible beating. He just wouldn't let go. He was killing her,” lawyer and academic Eoin Campbell tells us of the moment he landed a barrage of punches on a man who was strangling a woman on a French street.

He also reveals he lost €6,000 in earnings over an injury sustained as he fought for the woman's life - and that French authorities have snubbed his compensation plea.

“The matter put me in the red, and I think that the [French] state should take me back to the black,” he says.

Mr Campbell, 43, was speaking to us after a recent decision by a French state body to refuse him compensation for his ordeal in November 2022.

He intervened to save the woman from certain death in Villeurbanne in the French city of Lyon - an incident that turned the university lecturer into a local hero.

But he suffered a serious injury to his dominant right hand as he punched the attacker up to eight times - and that meant he was out of work for months and also lost thousands of euro in overtime and extra income.

But, despite applying to a national fund set up to compensate victims of crime, a panel turned him down in recent weeks.

That decision appalled Mr Campbell, from Warrenpoint in Co Down, who was a practising solicitor in Ireland before moving to Lyon in 2008.

He told us he feels the French state should have made up losses he suffered when he saved the young woman's life.

He says: “I want them to take me back to zero. I didn't ask for a new Ferrari. I just said, ‘Look, this cost me. Here's a reasonable estimate of what it cost, could I get that back?’ And they said no.”