French police said on Wednesday, September 24, that they arrested a 14-year-old pupil suspected of stabbing his music teacher in the classroom, injuring her in the face. The wounds sustained by the 66-year-old teacher in Benfeld, a town near Strasbourg in the east of the country, were not life-threatening, authorities said.
As police arrived at the scene to arrest the teenager, he stabbed himself several times and was taken to the Strasbourg hospital by helicopter after suffering cardio-respiratory arrest. The suspect's motive remains unclear, the local gendarmerie said. Education Minister Elisabeth Borne said she was immediately heading to the scene.
An education authority spokesman told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that the pupil's school results had been weak and that the school's educational team had been mobilized to help. The mayor of the town of 6,000 people, Jacky Wolfarth, called the incident "isolated."
Jean-Remi Girard, president of the SNALC teachers union, said, "We know that pupils can sometimes go crazy," adding that lockdowns during the Covid crisis had "affected our pupils' mental health."
But there was no "miracle solution," he said, adding that "We're not going to equip our schools with metal detector gates."
There has been a spate of violent incidents at French schools in recent months, prompting bag checks on entry in some establishments.