“Possessed” pupil stabs teacher to death

A teacher at a school in southwest France was killed on Wednesday in a stabbing attack by a teenage pupil in the middle of a lesson, AFP has reported.

According to AFP, the teacher of Spanish, 52, was teaching a class at the school in the seaside town of Saint-Jean-de-Luz when the pupil, 16, attacked her with a knife.

She was given emergency aid at the scene, but Bayonne prosecutor Jerome Bourrier told AFP she died of her wounds.

The pupil, Bourrier said, was arrested.

The publication further quotes a local daily,  Sud Ouest as saying the boy stormed into the teacher’s Spanish class with a knife and attacked her.

The school, Saint-Thomas d’Aquin, is a private and Catholic-based establishment close to the centre of Saint-Jean-de-Luz, which in summer is one of France’s best-loved resorts on the sandy Basque country coast.

By lunchtime, pupils were gradually leaving the premises after being confined to their classrooms for around two hours after the stabbing.

France’s Education Minister Pap Ndiaye said he was “extremely upset” by the death of the teacher and would be heading to the scene.

“I can barely imagine the trauma that this represents at a local level and more generally on a national scale,” said government spokesman Olivier Veran as quoted by AFP.

The BFM television channel said that the attacker had locked the classroom door and stabbed the teacher in her chest.

The channel quoted a source as saying that the boy then told another teacher that a “voice” had told him to carry out the action.

ALSO READ: Three dead, five injured in campus shooting

About the Author

Antony Nyongesa
I'm an avid reader, a novelist, producer and journalist with a nose for news. Mine is to tell the truth; truth and nothing but the truth.