A 15-year-old pupil has stabbed a teaching assistant, aged 31, outside Françoise Dolto secondary school in Nogent, France, with the woman dying from her injuries
A teaching assistant has died after being stabbed by a 15-year-old pupil at a school this morning.
The 31-year-old teaching assistant was attacked and seriously wounded with a knife during a bag search outside of the Françoise Dolto secondary school in Nogent, France. She was taken into care in a critical condition after being stabbed several times and tragically died from her injuries.
Education officials have said that the suspect “appears to be a student at the school” and that the attack happened just before classes were due to start. The school – which has 324 pupils – was placed in lockdown as police officers sought to secure the premises.
The pupil who is suspected of carrying out the attack was later arrested and taken into custody, said local police. A gendarme detained the student and suffered a hand injury during the arrest, added a spokesperson. The motive for the attack still remains unclear.
France President Emmanuel Macron said that the “nation is in mourning” over the incident and said the teaching assistant was the “victim of a senseless wave of violence”.
He wrote on X: “While watching over our children in Nogent, an educational assistant lost her life, the victim of a senseless wave of violence. We all stand with his family, his loved ones, his colleagues and the entire educational community. The nation is in mourning and the government is mobilized to reduce crime.”
Education Minister Elisabeth Borne, who introduced bag searches in French schools in March, said she would go to Nogent “to support the entire school community and the police”.
In a statement posted on X, Ms Borne said: “I salute the composure and commitment of those who acted to restrain the attacker and protect the students and staff. I am going to the scene in support of the entire school community and law enforcement.”
Elisabeth Allain-Moreno, secretary general of the SE-UNSA teachers’ union said she felt “immense pain” over the attack and that the teaching assistant was “simply doing her job by welcoming students at the entrance to the school”.
She added that the incident “shows that nothing can ever be completely secure and that it is prevention that needs to be focused on.”
France has in recent years seen a series of attacks on teachers and pupils, including the death of a 17-year-old high school student in Essonne, leading to the bag searches.
At the end of April, the education ministry reported that some 958 bag checks in schools had resulted in the seizure of 94 knives – nearly one in every ten bag searched.
Marine Le Pen, the far right politician, wrote on X: “Not a week goes by without a tragedy striking schools. The desacralisation of life, the trivialisation of extreme violence, encouraged by the apathy of public authorities to put an end to it, and the explosion in the carrying of bladed weapons.
“The French people are fed up and await a firm, implacable, and determined political response to the scourge of juvenile violence. Our thoughts go out to the family of this supervisor and to the teaching community, once again devastated by this daily violence.”