Teenager killed and three injured in Nantes college stabbing
A high school student has been killed and three others injured in a school stabbing attack in western France, police have said.
The alleged culprit, a 15-year-old student, was tackled by teachers and overpowered before police arrived to the scene at the Notre-Dame-de-Toutes-Aides school near the town hall of Doulon, in Nantes, a police spokesperson said.
Dozens of military officers, police, medics and fire officers are surrounding the school as the investigation into the attack gets underway in the school, which has been evacuated.
There is no indication of a terrorist motive, the spokesperson added. While the motive is currently unknown, high school students have revealed receiving a strange email from a second-year student on Thursday morning.
According to French outlet Ouest-France, the email was titled: ‘Immune Action – Revolt is the greatest victory we can achieve’. What followed was multiple pages of text discussing “ecocide, alienation, and social conditioning”.
There is no indication that the email is linked to the stabbing.
According to preliminary investigations, police believe the student entered two classrooms before carrying out the stabbing and subsequently being subdued, Le Parisien reported.
Recalling the chaos following the attack, one second-year student described people running around the courtyard, as someone held a door open shouting for them to get out.
“I was in the foyer, we saw a lot of people running around the courtyard, I heard that someone had a knife,” the student told Ouest-France.
“We didn’t know whether to believe it. Then we saw someone from IT holding the door to the high school building, he was yelling at us to get out. We took refuge with the middle school students. I just learned that a student had died…”
Another student said: “We were in the labs, the tension started to rise after the alarm sounded. We saw the police arrive. We stayed confined to the classrooms and then went out into the courtyard. We learned that teachers had intervened.”
Another student, who is in their final year at high school, told the outlet: “We’re very shocked. We only see this on television. We didn’t think it could happen in our high school.”
French education minister Elisabeth Borne said in a post on X: “A knife attack took place this afternoon at a private school in Nantes.
“I am going there with [interior minister] Bruno Retailleau to express my solidarity with the victims and my support for the educational community.”
More follows on this breaking news story…
Source: independent.co.uk
