French authorities say a 14-year-old student stabbed a school employee to death during a bag check

PARIS (AP) — A French middle school employee was stabbed to death by a 14-year-old student during a bag check Tuesday at their school in eastern France, authorities said. The student was detained.

A police officer helping with the bag checks was slightly injured during the arrest by the student, using the same knife he used against the school employee, the gendarme service said. The attack at the Francoise Dolto School in Nogent, north of the Burgundy city of Dijon, was being investigated.

“While she was looking after our children in Nogent, an educational assistant lost her life, a victim of senseless violence,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in a post on X. “The nation is in mourning and the government mobilized to bring crime down.”

Such fatal attacks have been rare in France, but concerns about school violence have been on the rise.

The Education Ministry introduced bag checks this year at some schools to reduce it. Over a two-month period this spring, 186 knives were seized during school bag checks and 32 people detained, the interior minister’s office said.

Regional Prosecutor Denis Devallois said the student was 14 years old and did not have a police record. Education Minister Elisabeth Borne said the boy had been a student representative in the school’s anti-bullying program, and had been briefly suspended earlier this year for disrupting class.

Police officers were carrying out bag checks just outside the school, and the school employee was standing alongside them when the stabbing occurred at the school entry, the gendarme service said.

The school’s classes were canceled for the day, and the prosecutor said psychological help was being offered to students and staff.

In April, a high school student stabbed four other students at his school in western France, killing one and wounding three others before being arrested, police said. That prompted the prime minister to call for tougher measures against knife violence in schools.