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CRIME

Teen causes panic in Paris store with fake machine gun

A teenager brandishing a fake machine gun sparked panic in a shopping centre in the western Paris suburbs on Monday night.

Published: 26 January 2016 12:58 CET
The 15-year-old entered a Monoprix supermarket in a shopping centre in Boulogne-Billancourt at around 6.30pm. 
 
He was armed with a fake American assault rifle and an automatic pistol, the local police commissioner said in a statement. 
 
What is purported to be a witness video has emerged, reported France TV Info, showing one of the fake guns after it was confiscated by authorities (see below). 
 
“We didn't know what was happening, everyone just started running,” one witness told Le Parisien newspaper. 
 
“Everyone was in a panic, people were screaming,” another told BFM TV. 
 
Police quickly arrested the teenager, and brought calm to the scene, although emergency services were called out to help at least one woman who had a panic attack, reported France TV Info.
 
Officers later said that the teen had been threatening customers, and was under the influence of alcohol at the time.
 
It remains unknown why the teen – who has been referred to as a “star student” by the French media – would pull such a stunt. 
 
Monday saw a second gun incident in a shopping centre, this time in the south city of Avignon. An armed person killed a man and injured another in what local media reported was a robbery gone wrong. 
 
France and especially Paris remain tetchy after terrorists armed with kalashnikovs killed 130 people in an indescriminate massacre in November. 
 
The nation remains in a state of emergency, which France's President Francois Hollande plans to extend. 
 

CRIME

French teen dies from heart failure after knife attack near school

A 14-year-old girl has died of a heart attack in eastern France after her school locked down to protect itself from a knife attacker who lightly wounded two other girls, an official said on Friday.

Published: 20 April 2024 08:58 CEST
French teen dies from heart failure after knife attack near school

The teenager “was rescued by teachers who were very fast to call the fire department. She died at the end of the afternoon,” education official Olivier Faron said.

The girl’s middle school in the village of Souffelweyersheim closed its doors on Thursday afternoon after a man stabbed two other girls aged 7 and 11 outside a nearby primary facility.

“Sadly this pupil underwent an episode of very high stress that led to a heart attack,” Faron said.

A mother outside the middle school on Friday morning said her son in first year of secondary had also been scared during the lockdown the previous day.

“Whereas in the primary school they made it more like a game, perhaps here it was a little too direct,” Deborah Wendling said.

“He thought there was an armed person in the school. They could hear doors slamming, but in fact it was just other classrooms locking down.”

Faron defended the teachers.

READ ALSO: Schoolgirl threatens teacher with knife as tensions rise in French schools

“There is no perfect solution,” he said.

But “we will analyse in depth what happened. If there are lessons to be taken from this, we will take them.”

The two girls hurt in the attack were discharged from hospital on Thursday evening with only light wounds.

Police have arrested the 30-year-old assailant, and a probe has been opened into “attempted murder of minors”, the prosecutor’s office said.

It was not immediately clear what had motivated him, but it did not appear to be “a terrorist act”, it said.

He was “psychiatrically fragile” and appeared to have stopped his medication.

The incident follows a series of attacks on schoolchildren by their peers, in particularly the fatal beating earlier this month of Shemseddine, 15, outside Paris.

French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal on Thursday announced measures to crack down on teenage violence in and around schools.

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