Saint Jean de Luz
“He stood up very naturally with his knife in hand, walked up to our teacher, then planted her. It all happened in a few seconds, ”
says Inès, a second-year student at the Thomas Aquinas Catholic high school in Saint-Jean-de-Luz.
Wednesday morning, in the middle of class, a Spanish teacher, Agnès Lassalle, died there, stabbed in the heart.
The alleged murderer, a 16-year-old student at the school since last September, said he
"heard voices"
and felt
"possessed"
.
Without a history, the young man, who does not seem to have a dispute with the victim, was placed in police custody and will be prosecuted for assassination, or premeditated murder.
“The nation is on your side”
, reacted President Emmanuel Macron on Twitter, expressing his
“intense emotion
.
I share the pain of
(the)
family
(of the victim),
of his colleagues, of his students, of our teachers who devote their lives to passing on knowledge to future generations
,” he wrote.
Having gone there in the afternoon in the company of Stanislas Guerini, Minister of Transformation and the Public Service, the Minister of National Education Pap Ndiaye deplored "a
drama of exceptional gravity which moved the whole of France.
It is a sad day for this establishment of excellence and for National Education
.
A minute of silence will be observed in all schools this Thursday afternoon.
The consternation in Saint-Jean-de-Luz is all the greater since the tragedy took place in its flagship establishment.
This private Catholic school, located a few hundred meters from the bay and overlooking the Pyrenees, is one of the most popular establishments in the Basque Country.
“Generations of Basques have passed through this establishment, which resembles a family.
The victim's colleagues are extremely close-knit, dedicated and moved, they cried in front of the minister
, ”testifies Max Brisson, senator for Pyrénées-Atlantiques.
“There has never been any difficulty here, as we observe elsewhere,”
adds this vice-president of the education committee in the Senate.
Most of the 1,100 students are bilingual - even trilingual - because this college-high school also welcomes many Spaniards.
“Nothing could predict this tragedy in this peaceful town and this high-quality establishment,”
said Marc Aillet, bishop of Bayonne, announcing an exceptional mass at the church of Saint-Jean-de-Luz this Thursday.
“Faced with the savagery of society”
All day Wednesday, residents and students from neighboring schools came to gather and lay flowers in front of the gate, in the middle of parents who came to pick up their children after being taken care of by psychologists.
"We stayed confined in class until noon, then the police came to get the body,"
says Hugo, in second, but not in the same class as the alleged murderer.
“We fled down the hall.
I did not see anyone intervening”
, Inès testifies again, while, according to other sources, the student would have kept the range closed to prevent his comrades from going out, before entrusting his knife to another teacher.
“Today is the time for emotion. The public prosecutor of Bayonne will investigate. It would be premature to draw conclusions from this drama for all of the establishments”
, judged the Minister of National Education, who said he did not envisage immediate measures, such as searches at the entrance to establishments.
All day, the reactions of the political world to this act recalling the assassination of another professor, Samuel Paty, for probably different reasons, poured in.
"Our black hussars of the Republic are on the front line against the enslavement of society"
, tweeted the president of the Republicans, Éric Ciotti, calling for
"reviewing the graduation of sentences for minors"
.
On the same social network, Marine Le Pen estimated that
“ultra-violence has conquered our whole society, up to school”
and that it is
“urgent to act for the safety of the French”
.
Sandrine Rousseau, EELV deputy, underlined the
"increasingly difficult working conditions of National Education staff"
.
The first secretary of the PS, Olivier Faure, presented his
“condolences to the family and
(his)
support for the educational community
.
We ask everything from our teachers who have to face all the violence in society
, ”he wrote.