On Wednesday, September 24th, French police arrested a 14-year-old student accused of stabbing his music teacher in the classroom, leaving her with facial injuries.
According to officials in Benfeld, near Strasbourg in eastern France, the 66-year-old teacher was injured but is not in a life-threatening condition. As officers intervened, the teenager inflicted multiple stab wounds on himself and was flown by helicopter to Strasbourg hospital following a cardio-respiratory arrest.
The local gendarmerie stated that the suspect’s motive remains unknown. Education minister and ex-PM Élisabeth Borne announced she was travelling to the scene without delay. Jacky Wolfarth, the mayor of the town of 6,000 residents, described the incident as “isolated.”
SNALC teachers’ union president Jean-Rémi Girard remarked, “we know that pupils can sometimes go crazy”, noting that lockdowns during the Covid crisis had “affected our pupils’ mental health.”
But there was no “miracle solution,” he cautioned, stressing that
We’re not going to equip our schools with metal detector gates.
Recent months have seen a spate of violent incidents in French schools, prompting some institutions to introduce bag checks at entry.
