The student suspected of having stabbed his Spanish teacher on Wednesday in Saint-Jean-de-Luz evoked “a small voice” which “suggested to him to commit an assassination”, but “appears accessible to criminal responsibility”, according to the prosecutor who will request his placement in pre-trial detention.
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The 16-year-old will be heard on Friday by an investigating magistrate as part of an open judicial investigation for “premeditated murder”, added Bayonne prosecutor Jérôme Bourrier during a press conference.
A minute of silence was observed Thursday at 3 p.m. in colleges and high schools that are not on vacation, in tribute to Professor Agnès Lassalle, 52, whose death in the classroom has upset the French educational community, a little more two years after the assassination of Samuel Paty, a history and geography professor beheaded by a young radicalized Islamist.
“It’s time for meditation, emotion, solidarity too,” said Minister of Education Pap Ndiaye to the students of Combe de Savoie College in Albertville.
In the morning, students from the Saint-Thomas d’Aquin Catholic high school in Saint-Jean-de-Luz had returned to their establishment with, for some, bouquets of flowers or white roses.
“It’s important to be present (at school) for your family, loved ones, students, you also have to give strength to those who have seen this,” said Rudy, a 3rd grade student who describes Ms. Lassalle as a “very nice teacher”, “listening”.
“Very dedicated”, this Spanish teacher “devoted most of her time to preparing her lessons (…), to helping her students grow”, underlined Mr. Ndiaye.
During his police custody, the suspected teenager “put forward a small voice which speaks to him, a being whom he describes as selfish, manipulative, egocentric, who incites him to do evil and who would have suggested to him the day before to commit an assassination”, explained Jérôme Bourrier.
AFP
The public prosecutor Jérôme Bourrier
“Follow-up by a psychiatrist”, the student had made in October “a drug suicide attempt and had since been prescribed antidepressants”.
The suspect also mentioned “acts of harassment” suffered in his previous establishment, a public college in the city, and “an argument” the day before with a comrade.
He also admitted “a form of animosity towards his Spanish teacher”, the only subject where his results were not good.
A first psychiatric examination revealed “a form of reactive anxiety which could disturb his discernment” and “elements of depression evolving for a year”, but “no mental illness of the schizophrenia type, manic state, melancholy or mental retardation, nor psychiatric decompensation acute”.
According to the prosecutor, “the adolescent appears accessible to criminal liability subject to the expert opinions which will have to be ordered and a possible alteration of his discernment”.
The boy had arrived at the start of the school year in this calm and popular college-high school in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, crowned with a mention very well for the patent, according to the rectorate of Bordeaux.
A classmate from his old college described him as “a shy boy”, who had “two or three friends, but not many more”. “Sometimes arrogant” or “choleric”, he did not like “too much to be taken back by the teachers in class”, according to her.
Wednesday at 9:45 a.m., in Spanish class, the young man got up, locked the classroom door and walked towards the teacher, taking out a kitchen knife with an 18 cm blade, hidden in a paper towel roll, explained the prosecutor.
He delivered “a single violent blow” with his right hand, “from top to bottom”, which “resulted in the section of the aorta and the attack of the right lung over a length of approximately 14 cm, with a perforation of the sternum”.
The young man was “appeased, controlled” in a nearby classroom by two teachers.
“At that time, continued the prosecutor, he allegedly said: ‘I ruined my life, it’s all over'”.
A medico-psychological emergency cell of 10 people, in addition to school medicine, has been set up in the establishment.
It is a question of “accompanying” the students who feel the need, “reassuring them”, “re-anchoring them in reality”, according to its manager, Elorri Amestoy, doctor in the psychiatric emergency room at the Bayonne hospital.
“We manage the frustration, the prostration, the excess of emotions, but above all we are there to prevent, because the symptoms can occur the following days”, she added.
Attacks on teachers are common in France, but AFP has recorded less than a dozen murders over the past four decades.
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