Sent hate mail to students – then 16-year-old attacked

France

Sent hate mail to students – then 16-year-old attacked

Johan Edgar

Published 00.00

Military and police on site at the school. Photo: Bfm Tv / AP

The 16-year-old sent a 13-page email to all students at the school.

Then he armed himself with two knives and went on the attack.

– My daughter called me and screamed. She said someone was killing people, a shocked mother tells Le Parisien.

The insane act at the Notre-Dame-de-Toutes-Aides primary school in the city of Nantes is shaking France.

The alarm came during lunchtime, at around 12:30 on Thursday.

A student armed with two knives had been walking around the corridors and slashing wildly. He also entered two classrooms.

A girl at school dead

A huge police force was sent to the school.

A girl died from her injuries and three other children were taken to hospital with stab wounds. One of the injured is said to be in critical condition.

         

Shaken students and parents gathered at the school. Photo: Loic Venance/AFP

The perpetrator, a 16-year-old student, was finally stopped by an IT technician at the school, Le Parisien reports.

He dropped his knives and allowed himself to be arrested by police without resistance.

According to police sources in the French press, the 16-year-old had attacked one of his victims on the second floor of the school building and then attacked the other three when they came down the stairs.

Received a terrifying message

They appear to have been chosen at random.

Outside the police cordons, worried parents quickly gathered after the school issued a statement about what had happened.

The message was terrifying for the parents:

“We want to inform you of a major incident. At lunchtime, there was a knife attack, a crisis plan has been activated and the students are housed in the school.”

Most of them had no way of getting hold of their children, who were locked in the school while the police searched the building.

“We are waiting to hug our children,” one mother told Le Parisien.

“Someone is killing people”

Students are not allowed to bring their mobile phones to school. But one mother tells Le Parisien that she received a shocking call from her daughter.

“My daughter called me and screamed. She said someone was killing people,” the mother says.

“I could hear students screaming in the background. I rushed here immediately and I have been waiting here ever since.”

Police with reinforcement weapons formed an iron ring around the school grounds.

When the 16-year-old was arrested, he was wearing a black glove on his right hand.

Sent hateful document

Nearby, the police found a black helmet, sunglasses and a balaclava, writes Le Parisen.

The knives he used in the attack, a hunting knife and a folding knife, were also there.

According to the newspaper, one of the police theories is that the 16-year-old wanted to be shot when he was arrested.

The motive for the act is still unclear.

Shortly before the mad attack, he emailed a 13-page document, described in the French press as a manifesto, to all students at the school.

Le Monde,which has read the document, states that he describes “globalization” in hateful terms and believes that it has “turned society into a machine for rotting people” and says he wants a “biological revolution”.

Several attacks

The 16-year-old has now been arrested and will now undergo a psychiatric examination.

The teenager is said to have previously been completely unknown to the police.

French Prime Minister François Bayrou says that efforts to combat knife violence among young people must be stepped up immediately.

The country has been rocked by a series of knife attacks around schools in recent months, writes Le Monde.

A commission will now investigate how other countries have managed to reduce the problem and increased controls in schools will be introduced.

The Notre-Dame-de-Toutes-Aides school has 2,000 students of all ages.