A schoolboy lightly wounded two classmates by shooting Thursday, June 8 near a school in Kourou, Guyana, leading to the confinement of students for several hours and the complete closure of the city, according to the gendarmerie. The facts occurred around 10 am (15:00 Paris time) "in the immediate vicinity of the establishment", the Henri-Agarande college of Kourou, told AFP General Jean-Christophe Sintive, commander of the gendarmerie of Guyana.
During an altercation whose reason "remains to be determined", a schoolboy pulled out a gun and fired two shots, wounding two of his classmates from the same establishment, General Sintive continued. Both victims sustained minor injuries, one in the leg and the other in the shoulder. This is the schoolboy who was targeted by the attacker and another who was passing by, he said.
Security device
In the minutes following the shooting, the students of the college were confined and "a large device of a hundred gendarmes was deployed" in Kourou, continued General Sintive. The city, where the Guiana Space Centre, the European Space Agency's rocket launch base, is located, has been "completely cordoned off", he added. The students were finally allowed to go out in the early afternoon, and the alleged shooter was arrested around 13:20 p.m. "on the public road," told AFP the prosecutor of the Republic of Cayenne, Yves Le Clair. The teenager, born in 2007, was taken into custody.
" READ ALSO Illegal gold panning: the missing soldier in Guyana found dead
On June 1, a young man was shot dead near a college in Saint-Laurent du Maroni, western Guyana. The alleged perpetrator, a 17-year-old boy, was arrested. The murder had nothing to do with the school, but several children witnessed the scene, and teachers walked out for an hour two days later to protest the insecurity.