A hero has revealed how he battled a man to rescue a woman from being beaten to death.

“I had to give him a terrible beating. He just wouldn’t let go. He was killing her,” barrister and academic Eoin Campbell told the Irish Mirror.

He also discloses he forfeited €6,000 (£5,200) in earnings over an injury sustained as he struggled for the woman’s life – and that French authorities have rejected his compensation appeal.

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

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

He stepped in to rescue the woman from certain death near the French city of Lyon – an incident that transformed the university lecturer into a local hero.

However, he sustained a serious injury to his dominant right hand as he struck the attacker up to eight times – and that meant he was unable to work for months and also forfeited thousands of euro in overtime and additional income.

Yet, despite applying to a national fund established to compensate victims of crime, a panel rejected him. That decision, by a panel in recent weeks, horrified Mr Campbell, from Warrenpoint in Co Down.

Mr Campbell, a former solicitor in Ireland who relocated to Lyon in 2008, believes the French state should compensate him for the losses he incurred while saving a young woman’s life. He states: “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.”

Mr Campbell, who has been working as a data privacy officer and law lecturer at the Université catholique de Lyon since his move, recounts the terrifying incident that occurred in early November 2022.

After alighting from a tram in Villeurbanne, he was walking the 400 metres to his flat and decided to take a shortcut through a car park. It was there that he noticed a man walking ahead of him.

He recalls: “He was walking the same direction as me, but he was over to my left and the front and there was this young woman approaching. She has come walking along, and I can see him heading straight for her.”

He continues: “He starts talking to her. I’m beginning to pay more and more attention because everything about this guy is weird. He doesn’t look right.”

Police reports later revealed that the man was wearing a flowing robe but was without trousers, jacket or shoes, despite it being November. What happened next prompted Mr Campbell and a Croatian passerby to intervene and rescue the woman.

He says: “He’s talking to her. He’s quite close to her, and she seems quite intimidated by him. And then he grabbed her around the shoulders. I shouted over to her, ‘Madame, do you know that man?'”.

“And just as she’s saying ‘no’, he smacks her. It was an open hand, but with real power. He hit her hard, awful hard. And then he started strangling her with bare hands.”

Mr Campbell immediately ran to help. He says: “I began running towards him.

“And by the time I got there I heard another fellow shouting, this Croat boy. He was entering the car park from the other side. We went running over together. But by the time we got there, your man’s around the back of her, and he’s strangling her out with his forearms.”

Mr Campbell, who played GAA and boxed as a youngster, says he knew he had to intervene physically to save the woman.

He says: “He was killing her. He was choking her. If you had been holding a gun to his head rather than trying to hit him, you would have had to pull the trigger.

“There was no fear there. The eyes were gone. You couldn’t negotiate with him. You couldn’t reason with him. He was trying to kill her. I boxed as a teenager, and I still hit a punch bag, so my first thought would be to punch him, but I couldn’t get near him, just the way she was.

“We’re trying to wrestle his arms off her. And then he leaps backwards and he brings her down on top of him. We dropped on top of him, I am screaming at him (in French) ‘Let her go, let her go.’ We are trying to wrestle his arms off because her face, at this point her face is still right in front of him, it’s almost impossible to reach him.

“Then the Croat man managed to wrestle one of the arms off, and basically he just pinned this one arm. That revealed the side of his face. And from there, I was able to lean over and I battered him.

“I had to give him a terrible beating because he wouldn’t let go. He just wouldn’t let go.”

When asked if he believed the man was going to kill the woman, Mr Campbelll replies: “One hundred per cent.”

We then ask him how many times he punched the attacker, and he says: “I’d say maybe seven or eight.

“The second last punch, I hurt him. I could see that it was like an electric shock that went through his face. With that last shot, he released her and we had to hold him on the ground.

“He was screaming all sorts of stuff about earthquakes and the end of the world. It was all fairly rambling stuff.

“We pinned him on the ground. The young lady got up. She was crying her eyes out. We had him in a crucifix position on the ground. He was thrashing around and I had my knee on his chest. She called the cops.”

He says the police arrived quickly – and he did not realise why until the following morning.

Mr Campbell revealed: “He had already attacked, I think, five women that night. He was on a rampage and they were already in the neighbourhood looking for him.”

Among his victims was an elderly woman who ended up in a coma due to the injuries he inflicted.

Mr Campbell also disclosed that he injured his hand while punching the attacker, who was later confined in a secure mental health facility.

He explained: “I hurt myself with the last punch. I was aiming for his cheekbone, but the way his head moved, that meant I slightly missed and I caught him with the lower part of the hand.”

The scholar admitted he didn’t immediately realise the severity of his injury.

He confessed: “I never went to a doctor straight away, which was a mistake.

“I didn’t get my hand seen to until the new year. My hand was swollen initially, and I didn’t think it was that big a deal.

“Having played GAA and boxed, I was used to injuries. The swelling didn’t feel that different at the time.

“But when the swelling subsided, my hand was a mess. The movement was off, and it looked out of place.

“I was home at Christmas, and the family said, ‘The state of your hand, you need to get that sorted out.’ It was starting to feel more and more sore.”

Upon returning to Lyon in January 2023, after several medical consultations, it was determined that he had ruptured tendons in his dominant right hand.

This meant he was still able to teach, but marking exams at the end of the term was off the table. Upon informing his workplace, they suggested he take medical leave, which he did for two months.

He explains: “I had to take two months off and that brought me into the summer time. In those two months, normally I would be doing additional work. I was missing out on my summer extras. I was missing out on my overtime work.

“And there would be a series of interviews you would do for incoming students, which is all overtime because it is out of semester. That’s where I started to lose money.”

He estimates his injury has cost him around €6,000, including having to retake a data protection course he was enrolled in at the time of the incident, as well as lost teaching hours at another college.

Furthermore, he was unable to drive and had to rely on taxis, and cooking was also off-limits for several months.

In September of this year, Mr Campbell sought compensation from the fond de garantie, a state fund for victims of crime, through a court case.

However, his claim was rejected by the three-person panel on the grounds that he was not assaulted by the attacker he confronted.

He says: “When I took the case, I asked for the money I lost back. That’s what I asked for. This has cost me, and I was trying to get compensation for that.”

He further stated: “They’re saying under the legislation, I’m not owed anything, because I’m not a victim. I wasn’t attacked. He didn’t attack me. And in my police statement, I was fairly blunt about that, I said ‘look, he didn’t attack me. He never tried to hit me’.

“They’re using that to say, ‘Look, you’re not a victim’. I was morally obliged to help that young lady, and I got hurt doing it.

“All I’m saying is the state should protect me as well. I protected that young lady, and I want the state to protect me. I shouldn’t have to take that sort of financial hit.”

Despite his ordeal, he insists he has no regrets about stepping in. Mr Campbell says: “I can’t regret it. I know I should probably be proud of it, but I can’t.

“The incident itself was just so disgusting that you can never look back on that and feel good about it. You can’t. It was just horrible. And you see a woman that young and he just demolished her.

“The way he took her to the ground, I can only feel disgusted about the incident. Trying to take some sort of pride out of the incident, it just doesn’t work. I just can’t feel it.”