French authorities have arrested a 14-year-old student for interrogation after he allegedly stabbed a teaching assistant to death outside a school in Nogent, in the northeastern part of the country.
The 31-year-old teaching assistant was attacked around 8:30 a.m. at the entrance of Françoise Dolto Middle School during a routine bag search for knives and other concealed weapons.
The victim, who was a mother of a four-year-old child, was taken into care in what officials described as an “absolute emergency,” but sadly succumbed to her injuries.
France’s Education Minister, Élisabeth Borne, who visited the scene, said the incident underscores the need to support the entire school community and law enforcement agencies.
“She was simply doing her job by welcoming students at the school entrance,” Borne said, expressing condolences to the victim’s family and colleagues.
Condemning the killing on Tuesday, President Emmanuel Macron described the teaching assistant as a “victim of a senseless wave of violence” .
“While watching over our children in Nogent, an education assistant lost her life. The nation is in mourning, and the government is mobilized to reduce crime,” he said.
This incident adds to a troubling pattern of knife attacks in French schools. In October last year, a teacher was fatally stabbed during an attack in the northern city of Arras.
Similarly, in April this year, a stabbing at a high school in Nantes prompted French politician François Bayrou to call for “an intensification of controls put in place around and within schools.”
Responding to these threats, the Ministry of National Education reported that by the end of April, 94 bladed weapons had been seized during 958 random bag checks conducted at schools since March.
