A 5th grade student threatened her teacher with a knife at the Hautes Ourmes college in Rennes this Wednesday morning. The teenager was arrested before causing any injuries, but may have had “the intention to kill” according to the prosecution.
A new threat against a teacher. This Wednesday, December 13, a 5th grade student at the Hautes Ourmes college in Rennes, Ille-et-Vilaine, threatened her English teacher with a knife. The events occurred a little before 10 a.m. according to the message sent by the management of the establishment to the parents of the students. The 12-year-old girl brandished the weapon in the direction of her teacher who immediately fled. The young girl allegedly chased the teacher in the corridors before being quickly subdued and disarmed by members of the teaching team. She has since been arrested and handed over to police. The incident did not cause any injuries according to the college management.
The student allegedly “came to class armed with a large knife with the apparent intention of killing her English teacher” indicated the Rennes public prosecutor, Philippe Astruc, in a press release. The teenager in question would be “a student born in 2011 in Marseille” according to the same source and educated in the Rennes establishment since the start of the school year in September 2023 according to details from Le Parisien.
The motivations and the plan for a fatal attack on the teacher have yet to be confirmed, but according to a source present in the school interviewed by the Ile-de-France newspaper, the young girl said she wanted to “be [her]self” at the time of brandish the knife to do “like in Arras”. A reference to the attack perpetrated by Mohammed Mogouchkov which left one teacher dead and two injured on October 13.
The public prosecutor’s office announced the opening of a criminal investigation entrusted to the Rennes Departmental Security after the threat from the teacher. The motive for the attack remains to be determined, but the first elements did not reveal signs of radicalization or Islamism in the young girl’s profile according to a police source from BFMTV. The same source also indicated that the 12-year-old had her phone confiscated during a lesson with the threatened teacher only a few days before the incident and that the student could have been angry with the teacher for that. . All hypotheses remain considered. The Rennes prosecutor’s office could make a new “communication” in the afternoon according to Le Parisien.
At the Hautes Ourmes college, all classes were interrupted around 11 a.m., the teacher was evacuated and the students were authorized to leave the establishment according to France 3. A listening cell must be set up this afternoon and must remain active until Friday. The rector of the academy “went immediately to the site to support the team and ensure that students and staff were taken care of”.
