Drama in Saint-Jean-de-Luz. A 16-year-old student stabbed his teacher to death on Wednesday morning. The point on what we know of the drama.
What happened ?
The facts took place, around 10 a.m., in the college-high school Saint Thomas d’Aquin, a private establishment in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques. After taking a knife out of his bag, a high school student in second grade stabbed his 50-year-old Spanish teacher in his class. The victim was hit in the sternum. A few minutes after the events, and despite the intervention of the emergency services, the teacher died.
The police and emergency services quickly arrived on the spot after being alerted to an attack in this school. Meanwhile, other students have been confined to classrooms.
What do we know about the alleged perpetrator?
For the time being, we do not know either the intentions or the reasons for the acting out of the teenager, educated in second class, but the latter, born in 2007, was arrested and placed in police custody. According to our information, he is unknown to justice and reportedly declared to be “possessed” and even to have “heard voices” telling him to kill his teacher.
According to the public prosecutor of Bayonne in Paris, an investigation has been opened and has been entrusted to the judicial police of Bordeaux.
What are the reactions?
“It’s a shock. A tragedy that echoes the assassination of Samuel Paty and other events of violence against teachers that ended less tragically, we need to have more information. We have a thought for the family of the victim and for the whole of the educational community”, Stéphane Crochet, secretary general of SE-UNSA.
During his speech at the end of the Council of Ministers, Olivier Véran addressed “all the support” of the executive to “the educational community as a whole”. The government spokesman also spoke of the “trauma that it can represent on a national scale” and announced that the Minister of National Education, Pap Ndiaye, is going there “during the day”.
Quickly, a medico-psychological emergency unit was set up for students and teachers. For Serge Hastoy, FEP-CFDT delegate from the Basque Country: “It’s a tragedy, I’m going there. The colleagues are going to need a lot of support at first. This is very unexpected, given the profile of this favored establishment. Nothing suggested that it could happen here. To my knowledge, there is no precedent. It’s absolute horror. Then, I hope the ministry won’t tell us not to ‘rock the boat’. We want answers. »
What precedents?
The murders of teachers, like the one that occurred on Wednesday, are a very rare event, even if attacks are frequent. A dozen professors have been killed in France for forty years within the framework of their function.