French authorities say a teen stabbed a school employee to death during a bag check

The French flag flies Monday, Dec. 23, 2024 at the Elysee Palace in Paris. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla) (Thomas Padilla/AP)

PARIS — A French middle school employee was stabbed to death by a teenage student during a bag check Tuesday at their school in eastern France, the national gendarme service said. The student was detained.

A police officer helping with the bag checks was slightly injured during the arrest by the student, using the same knife he used against the school employee, the gendarme service said. The attack at the Francoise Dolto School in Nogent, north of the Burgundy city of Dijon, was being investigated.

“While she was looking after our children in Nogent, an educational assistant lost her life, a victim of senseless violence,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in a post on X. “The nation is in mourning and the government mobilized to bring crime down.”

Such fatal attacks have been rare in France, but concerns about school violence have been on the rise.

The Education Ministry introduced bag checks this year at some schools to reduce it. Over a two-month period this spring, 186 knives were seized during school bag checks and 32 people detained, the interior minister’s office said.

The gendarme service said the student was 15 years old, while Prime Minister Francois Bayrou said the student was 14. Authorities were not immediately able to explain the discrepancy.

The exact circumstances of what happened were unclear. Police officers were carrying out bag checks just outside the school, and the school employee was standing alongside them when the stabbing occurred at the school entry, the gendarme service said.

The school’s classes were canceled for the day, and Prosecutor Denis Devallois said psychological help was being offered to students and staff.

After Tuesday’s attack, Bayrou called the threat of knife violence among children a `’public enemy." The lower house of parliament planned a moment of silence in honor of the school employee at the opening of its session later Tuesday.

In April, a high school student stabbed four other students at his school in western France, killing one and wounding three others before being arrested, police said.

The Associated Press