Teaching
assistant fatally stabbed by pupil at school in north-east France
Fourteen-year-old
suspect arrested and Emmanuel Macron condemns ‘senseless violence’ after
stabbing in Nogent
Angelique
Chrisafis in Paris and agencies
Tue 10 Jun
2025 12.25 BST
Emmanuel
Macron has condemned what he called a “senseless wave of violence” after a
14-year-old pupil fatally stabbed a teaching assistant at a school.
The
31-year-old woman died in hospital after she was stabbed during a bag search at
the start of the school day outside a middle school in Nogent, in the
Haute-Marne department in north-east France.
The French
president wrote on social media: “While protecting our children, a teaching
assistant lost her life, the victim of a senseless wave of violence … The
nation is in mourning and the government is mobilised to reduce crime.”
The
education minister, Élisabeth Borne, wrote on social media: “I commend the
composure and dedication of those who acted to subdue the attacker and protect
the students and staff.”
The
14-year-old suspect, who was overpowered by gendarmes and is in police custody,
was not previously known to police. Education officials told Agence
France-Presse he “appeared to be a student at the school”.
Borne said
the suspect was “a young man from a family where both parents work, who had not
shown any particular difficulties.” He was an anti-bullying representative at
the school.
She said:
“Young people are shocked. 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.”
The teaching
assistant, a former hairdresser who had been working at the school since
September, received several knife wounds. She was the mother of a young boy.
One of her cousins described her as “a very cheerful, very kind person.”
About 300
pupils at the school were locked down inside at the time of the boy’s arrest.
In March,
French police started random searches for knives and other weapons concealed in
bags in and around schools.
Élisabeth
Allain-Moreno, the secretary general of the SE-Unsa teachers’ union, said the
teaching assistant was “simply doing her job by welcoming students at the
entrance to the school”. She said the attack “shows that nothing can ever be
completely secure and that it is prevention that needs to be focused on”.
Jean-Rémi
Girard, the president of the National Union of Secondary Schools, said: “It’s
impossible to be more vigilant 24 hours a day. We can’t say that every student
is a danger or a threat, otherwise we’d never get out of bed in the morning.”
The French
far-right leader Marine Le Pen denounced what she called the “normalisation of
extreme violence, encouraged by the apathy of the authorities”. She wrote on
social media: “Not a week goes by without a tragedy striking a school. The
French people have had enough and are waiting for a firm, uncompromising and
determined political response to the scourge of juvenile violence.”
At the end
of April, after a fatal attack at a school in Nantes, the education ministry
reported that 958 random bag checks in schools had led to the seizure of 94
knives.
After that
knife attack, which left one person dead and three injured, the prime minister,
François Bayrou, called for more intensive checks around and inside schools.
Agence
France-Presse contributed to this report
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