Teenage Student Kills French School Assistant Amid ‘Breakdown of Society’
By Stefan J. Bos, Worthy News Europe Bureau Chief
PARIS/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – A French middle school employee was stabbed to death by a 14-year-old student in northeastern France on the same day that, elsewhere in Europe, in Austria, at least 11 people died after a school shooting, officials confirmed.
Tuesday’s stabbing of a 31-year-old school assistant happened while pupils’ bags were being checked outside the school gates in the French municipality of Nogent, said the National Gendarmerie, France’s law enforcement service.
The alleged attacker, who has no criminal record, was restrained and detained by police monitoring the inspections, said prosecutor Denis Devallois. One officer was slightly injured, he added.
The teenager is held at the gendarmerie of Nogent while being interrogated, explained the Haute-Marne Prefecture, the regional authority
The suspect is “a young man from a family where both parents work, who does not present any particular difficulties”, Education Minister Élisabeth Borne added at the scene in Nogent.
“The young people are shocked,” Borne noticed. “They are also very shocked to see that one of their classmates could commit such a horrific act. And this classmate was very well integrated in the middle school.”
On Tuesday, French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou said the government plans to test adding security gates at schools following the attack.
FRENCH PRESIDENT
The French President Emmanuel Macron also pledged to increase security. “While she was looking after our children in Nogent, an educational assistant lost her life, a victim of senseless violence,” Macron said.
“The nation is in mourning and the government is mobilised to reduce crime,” Macron added on social media.
The victim, a former hairdresser who had been working at the school since September, was the mother of a young boy, said one of her cousins, Aurore.
“She was a very cheerful, very kind person.”
As the extent of the tragedy became clear, French lawmakers observed a minute’s silence in parliament.
Prime Minister Bayrou stressed that the stabbing showed “a breakdown of the society in which we live.”
He noted that “This is not just an isolated incident.”
BROADER PROBLEM
France has been shocked by attacks on teachers and pupils by other schoolchildren as part of a general reported rise in youth crime.
In April, a student killed a girl and wounded several other pupils in a stabbing spree in the western city of Nantes.
Government figures released in February show that reports of bladed weapons in schools have jumped by 15 percent in the last year.
The education ministry said 6,000 checks in schools between March 26 and May 23 resulted in the seizure of 186 knives.
Tuesday’s attack came while Austria plunged into three days of national mourning after at least 11 people died in a shooting at a secondary school in the southern city of Graz.
Among those who died Tuesday was the alleged attacker, described by Austrian media as a former pupil.
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