French teenager charged with murder over teacher killing

Prosecutors have charged a 16-year-old boy with murder over the fatal stabbing of his Spanish teacher during class earlier this week in southwest France, his lawyer said on Friday.

Published: 23 February 2023 16:08 CET
Updated: 24 February 2023 14:54 CET

French teenager charged with murder over teacher killing

Bouquets of flowers at the entrance gate of the Saint-Thomas dAquin middle school where a teacher died after being stabbed by a student, in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, southwestern France. Photo by GAIZKA IROZ / AFP

The teenager would be held in custody at an unnamed “facility that will take into account his youth and the care he needs”, lawyer Thierry Sagardoytho said.

Spanish teacher Agnes Lassalle, 52, was stabbed on Wednesday as she taught a class at Saint Thomas Aquinas middle and secondary school in southwestern seaside town of Saint-Jean-de-Luz.

Despite emergency medical treatment at the scene, she died of her injuries.

Lassalle had been a “good listener”, a “very kind teacher”, said Rudy, a middle school pupil who had a class with her last year.

Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, the Bayonne area prosecutor Jérôme Bourrier said that the 16-year-old boy was “intelligent and hard-working but shy and socially awkward and had been diagnosed with dyslexia when he was younger”.

On Friday, the boy’s lawyer told AFP that prosecutors charged him with murder.

During the press conference on Thursday, Bourrier said that the boy had told police that a “little voice” had told him to attack his teacher.

But he added that a psychiatric examination showed no sign of severe, Schizophrenia-style mental illness, although the boy had been receiving treatment for depression.

Bourrier said that the boy had used a kitchen knife that he had brought to school from his father’s home to stab Lassalle.

The boy was not previously know to police, or to social services.

Schools around France held a minute’s silence on Thursday in memory of Agnès Lassalle.

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The French Jewish community, the third largest in the world, has for months been on edge in the face of a growing number of attacks and desecrations of memorials.

“National police in Rouen neutralised early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Police responded at 6.45 am to reports of “fire near the synagogue”, a police source said.

A source close to the case told AFP the man “was armed with a knife and an iron bar, he approached police, who fired. The individual died”.

“It is not only the Jewish community that is affected. It is the entire city of Rouen that is bruised and in shock,” Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol wrote on X.

He made clear there were no other victims other than the attacker.

Two separate investigations have been opened, one into the fire at the synagogue and another into the circumstances of the death of the individual killed by the police, Rouen prosecutors said.

Such an investigation by France’s police inspectorate general is automatic whenever an individual is killed by the police.

The man threatened a police officer with a knife and the latter used his service weapon, said the Rouen prosecutor.

The dead man was not immediately identified, a police source said.

Asked by AFP, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office said that it is currently assessing whether it will take up the case.

France has the largest Jewish community of any country after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim community.

There have been tensions in France in the wake of the October 7th attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel, followed by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Red hand graffiti was painted onto France’s Holocaust Memorial earlier this week, prompted anger including from President Emmanuel Macron who condemned “odious anti-Semitism”.

“Attempting to burn a synagogue is an attempt to intimidate all Jews. Once again, there is an attempt to impose a climate of terror on the Jews of our country. Combating anti-Semitism means defending the Republic,” Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF). wrote on X.

France was hit from 2015 by a spate of Islamist attacks that also hit Jewish targets. There have been isolated attacks in recent months and France’s security alert remains at its highest level.