A 14-year-old boy has been arrested after the fatal stabbing of a female educational assistant in France.
The 31-year-old woman, who local outlets have named as Mélanie, was stabbed to death during a bag check at Françoise Dolto middle school in the commune of Nogent in the northeastern department of Haute-Marne.
According to Le Figaro, the suspect was not known to police and was a student at the school.
President Emmanuel Macron said, the teaching assistant was a “victim of a senseless wave of violence” and declared that “the nation is in mourning”.
Reacting to the incident, National Rally leader Marine Le Pen said, “Not a week goes by without a tragedy striking schools. The desacralisation of life, the trivialisation of extreme violence, encouraged by the apathy of public authorities to put an end to it, and the explosion in the carrying of bladed weapons—the French people are fed up and await a firm, implacable, and determined political response to the scourge of juvenile violence.
“Our thoughts go out to the family of this supervisor and to the teaching community, once again devastated by this daily violence.” she said.
President of the National Union of Secondary Schools, Jean-Remi Girard, said,”It’s impossible
to be more vigilant 24 hours a day. We can’t say that every student is a danger or a threat, otherwise we’d never get out of bed in the morning.”
France has experienced a number of recent school knife attacks. Last october a teacher was killed in the northern city of Arras.
There was also a stabbing at a high school in Nantes in April which led to calls for the “an intensification of controls put in place around and within schools”.