A student armed with a knife attacked four classmates before being overpowered by teachers, according to reports Credit: Loic Venance/AFP
Initial reports suggest 15-year-old attacked four classmates at private secondary school in Nantes A secondary school student has stabbed a fellow pupil to death and injured three others in an attack in Nantes, western France, police say. The incident took place at Notre-Dame de Toutes-Aides, a private secondary school, at around 12:30pm.
According to initial reports, a 15-year-old student attacked four of his classmates while armed with a knife. A police spokesman said the pupil was overpowered by teachers before police arrived and there was no indication of a terrorist motive.
BFMTV reported that the deceased pupil was female. It added that one of the surviving victims was in a critical condition, a second remained in a serious condition and a third had minor injuries The assailant, identified only as Justin P, is unknown to police, but schoolmates said he had been “acting strangely” since the start of the year.
French media said he had sent a document to all the school’s pupils via his student’s email account that “painted a very bleak picture of our society”.
Elisabeth Borne, the French education minister, said: “A knife attack took place at lunchtime today at a private school in Nantes. “I am heading to the scene with [interior minister] Bruno Retailleau to express my solidarity with the victims and my support for the educational community.”
Images from the scene showed police and armed military forces surrounding the school as the investigation got underway “We’re very shocked,” a senior student told local news website Ouest France. “We only see this on television. We didn’t think it could happen in our high school.”
Another student said: “We still haven’t realised what happened; it’s shocking.”
“I was in a [class] in a building isolated from the second and first year students and we heard the start of an alarm at 12.30 pm, but nothing more. When we left at 1pm, we saw second year students crying, and then some friends told me that it had happened on the second year side, with three people stabbed.”
A school official did not comment on the incident, saying they were concentrating on caring for students who were on campus at the time of the attack.A press conference is scheduled for 7pm French time (6pm GMT) at the local criminal court in Nantes.
Contributed by the Telegraph
