A 14-year-old girl died of a heart attack in eastern France after her school closed to protect herself from a knife attacker.
The man slightly injured two other girls in Thursday’s attack, but amid the chaos – in which students were terrified by the sound of slamming doors – the teenager suffered a heart attack and was later pronounced dead, it was announced today.
The girl was rescued by teachers who quickly called the firefighters. She died at the end of the afternoon,” said education officer Olivier Faron.
Their secondary school in the village of Souffelweyersheim closed its doors Thursday afternoon after a man stabbed two other girls, ages 7 and 11, outside a nearby primary facility.
Faron said that during the attack the teenager who died ‘sadly […] He suffered a very high stress episode that caused him to have a heart attack.
A 14-year-old girl died of a heart attack in eastern France after her school (pictured Thursday) closed to protect herself from a knife-wielding attacker who lightly injured two other girls, an official said Friday, leaving to the terrified students. by the sound of slamming doors
A mother outside the high school on Friday morning said her high school freshman son had also been scared during the lockdown the day before.
“While in elementary school they did it more like a game, here it was maybe too direct,” said Deborah Wendling.
‘He thought there was an armed person in the school. You could hear doors slamming, but in reality it was other classrooms that were closing.’
Faron defended the teachers.
“There is no perfect solution,” he said. But ‘we will analyze what happened in depth.’ If there are lessons to be learned from this, we will learn them.”
The two girls injured in the attack were released from the hospital Thursday afternoon with only minor injuries.
Police arrested the attacker, 30, and an investigation was opened for “attempted murder of minors,” the prosecutor’s office said.
It was not immediately clear what had motivated him, but he was “psychologically fragile” and did not appear to be “a terrorist act,” he said.
French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal on Thursday announced measures to end teenage violence in and around schools.
The incident follows a series of attacks on schoolchildren by their peers, notably the fatal beating earlier this month of 15-year-old Shemseddine on the outskirts of Paris.
France, which introduced a ban on religious dress in schools in a bid to preserve secular tradition two decades ago, remains steadfast in its efforts to preserve the ban while protecting teachers and children.
Attal said last month that the country was raising its security alert to the highest level after the Moscow concert hall attack.
The girl was rescued by teachers who quickly called the firefighters. She died at the end of the afternoon,” said education officer Olivier Faron.
Parents pick up their children as police forces and firefighters look on at a school in the eastern French town of Souffelweyersheim after two girls were injured in a knife attack outside the school on April 18, 2024.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the March 22 atrocity, in which gunmen burst into a public event and indiscriminately shot civilians with automatic weapons, killing at least 143.
Up to 45,000 French police and gendarmes will currently be deployed each day during this summer’s Olympic Games, while 18,000 soldiers are also expected to be mobilized, according to government figures.
Another 18,000 to 22,000 private security guards will be on the ground for the Games, which run from July 26 to August 11.
The latest threats follow a series of false bomb alerts targeting schools, airports and tourist sites in the fall of 2023.