Paris, Oct 13. (dpa/GNA) РFrench authorities have launched an investigation into suspected attempted murder, after a 14-year-old boy shot a headteacher and a teacher with a hunting rifle at a school in southern France on Monday, Interior Minister Laurent Nu̱ez said.
Visiting the school alongside Education Minister, Édouard Geffray, Nuñez said a wave of shock had swept through the community and the country.
The headteacher and the teacher sustained injuries to their lower limbs, and were taken to hospital, according to Audrey Jouaneton, deputy public prosecutor in Marseille. No one else was injured in the incident.
The teenager, who is a pupil at the secondary school in Aubagne, is said to have brought the rifle into the school, hidden in a guitar case.
He was overpowered by a teacher. The teenager’s motive and whether he had specifically targeted the headteacher and the teacher are not yet known, the public prosecutor said.
The pupil said nothing about his motive, either during or after his attack, and appeared calm, Jouaneton added.
After the first shots were fired in the first-floor hall, the boy ran up one floor and fired a shot at the floor in the direction of another teacher. He then ran into a classroom and fired a shot towards the blackboard in front of the class, Jouaneton said.
A total of at least four shots were fired. The shooting at the school is not linked to the current school protests in France. There were no protests or blockades at the school where the shots were fired.
French President Emmanuel Macron, expressed his “full solidarity” with those affected in a post on X.
He praised “the composure and exemplary response” of the teachers, “which prevented the worst from happening.”
Geffray emphasized the “sanctity of school,” saying the taboo against attacking teachers must be restored “in families, in society, in the media, everywhere.”
GNA