French Student Is Arrested After Teaching Assistant Is Stabbed to Death

A French teaching assistant was killed on Tuesday after being stabbed many times during a luggage search at a middle school in France.

According to local officials, police promptly detained a 14-year-old boy at his school in Nogent, a small town in northeastern France. Students, many of whom were distressed after witnessing the gruesome sight, were held under lockdown and then released to their parents throughout the day.

The incident heightened anxieties in France, where schoolteachers have been the target of rising violence in recent years. The police have not yet revealed the motivation for the stabbing, and the national antiterrorism prosecutor’s office has not launched an inquiry.

Élisabeth Borne, the French education minister who raced to the scene, informed reporters that the youngster had been suspended twice earlier in the school year for disrupting his class but had not caused any problems since then. He appeared to have a stable household and had served as an anti-bullying ambassador at school, she explained. The student, who has not been identified, has no criminal past, according to the local state prosecutor.

“His professors are totally shocked by what happened,” Ms. Borne told reporters on Tuesday afternoon.

Students who had lined up for the luggage check, which was monitored by local police officers, were in deep shock, she claimed, and a psychological support team was promptly sent.

The 31-year-old teaching assistant, who has not been identified by authorities, had previously worked as a hairdresser but had decided to change careers, two of his relatives and a former client told French media on Tuesday.

President Emmanuel Macron of France stated on social media that the assistant was “the victim of an insane surge in violence.”

“The Nation is in mourning and the government is mobilized to fight against crime,” the minister said.

Prime Minister François Bayrou announced that his administration will immediately prohibit minors from acquiring any knife that may be used as a weapon, including kitchen knives.

“We are certain we are facing an epidemic,” he stated on Tuesday evening.

In recent years, there have been several deadly violent attacks against teachers in France. The government is increasingly worried about knife assaults by young people in schools. Ms. Borne declared in February that she would conduct random bag searches at schools, and her ministry said that, in the two months preceding up to May 23, 186 knives had been discovered in around 6000 searches.

The country is still reeling from the heinous murder of a history teacher, Samuel Paty, in 2020, who was beheaded near a school after displaying cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a civics lesson to demonstrate free expression. A Paris court sentenced eight persons for their participation in the murders.

Dominique Bernard, a French literature teacher, was fatally stabbed outside his Arras school in 2023 by a former pupil. The teenager professed allegiance to the Islamic State in an audio recording on a smartphone purchased that morning, according to the country’s chief antiterrorism prosecutor.

Schools occupy a near-sacred place in the framework of the French Republic because they are viewed as venues where the culture of a secular, nondiscriminatory, and colorblind society is taught, no matter how far from that ideal France may slip.

On Tuesday, officers conducted their second bag check at Nogent Middle School. There were no firearms discovered there prior to this morning, according to authorities.