An investigation was opened for assassination after the death of a Spanish teacher, stabbed Wednesday in her class in Saint-Jean-de-Luz (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) by a student presented as psychologically unstable, an extremely rare drama in France.
“He approached her and stuck a large knife in her chest, without saying anything,” told AFP Inès, 16, who was in the second class of the private Catholic high school. Saint-Thomas d’Aquin at the time of the events, which occurred in the middle of the morning.
“We didn’t know how to react, there was a student who opened the door and we all left. I ran away, I left the establishment and the father of a friend came to pick me up, I did not feel safe in high school, ”she added, assuring that he “n There had never been a problem between” the author of the aggression “and the teacher in class”.
The victim, whom the emergency services could not revive, is a 52-year-old teacher according to the prosecution. “This is a Spanish teacher who had been in this establishment for a long time. She was conscientious,” Serge Hastoy, FEP-CFDT delegate from the Basque Country, told AFP.
The Minister of National Education, Pap Ndiaye, who came to the scene, praised the “exceptional dedication” of this teacher and her “commitment to the service of her students”.
The alleged perpetrator of the assault, aged 16, was “placed in police custody” and “was not known to the police or the justice services”, according to Bayonne prosecutor Jérôme Bourrier , which has opened an investigation for “assassination”.
“His condition allows his interrogation” in the premises of the judicial police of Bayonne, he specified, while two sources close to the file spoke to AFP of a young man making “incoherent remarks” and “troubled proven psychiatrist”.
“To my knowledge, there were no particular circumstances or reports,” said Pap Ndiaye during a press conference organized in front of the establishment, alongside his counterpart in the Civil Service Stanislas Guerini and Mr. .
“It’s a sad day for National Education,” added the minister, who announced that a minute’s silence would be observed Thursday at 3 p.m. in colleges and high schools across the country that are not currently on school holidays.
“The Nation is by your side”, declared President Emmanuel Macron to the address of the educational community on Twitter, while the head of government Élisabeth Borne shared “the shock and the pain of the educational community” of the college-high school Saint Thomas Aquinas.
This private Catholic establishment of just over 1,100 students had so far been “calm” and “renowned for its seriousness and for the serenity of its school climate”, according to Mr. Ndiaye.
After being confined for about two hours in their classrooms, the students left the establishment at midday, with the exception of those in the class of the deceased teacher, who left the premises for two hours. later, noted an AFP correspondent.
They were taken care of by a psychological unit, just like the students of the establishment’s two other second classes. Thursday morning will also be “trivialized”, said Mr. Ndiaye.
Maha Bargueche, a mathematics teacher in the Paris region who is vacationing in the Basque Country, came to lay a bouquet of flowers in front of the establishment “as a sign of support”. “I am very sad, it could have happened to me, it can happen to any teacher. That’s why I came immediately,” she said.
This is the first time that a teacher has been killed in office in France since the assassination of Samuel Paty, a history and geography professor beheaded on October 16, 2020 by a young radicalized Islamist man.
Assaults are frequent, but AFP has recorded less than a dozen murders over the past four decades.
In July 2014, a 34-year-old teacher was stabbed to death by the mother of a student at a school in Albi. In August 1996, while he was walking at the Dax feria, a 51-year-old English teacher was killed by two young people, including one of his students who had failed in the baccalaureate.
Mgr Marc Aillet, Bishop of Bayonne, said he was “very touched by the solicitude of the authorities” when he arrived on the scene to express “all (his) compassion and all (his) prayer for this family in shock of an unthinkable event that should never have happened”.
