She was hospitalized, with doctors judging that she represented “a danger to herself”. Before being received in care, the schoolgirl suspected of having wanted to kill her teacher with a knife “had asserted her right to silence” on the facts with which she is accused, said the public prosecutor of Rennes Philippe Astruc . This Friday, the magistrate announced the opening of two legal proceedings after this attack which occurred on Wednesday in a class at the Hautes-Ourmes college, in the working-class district of Blosne. The first was opened in criminal matters for attempted murder of a person entrusted with a public service mission.
Investigators from the Rennes judicial police are seeking in particular to establish whether the teenager of Mongolian origin premeditated her action. While attending the screening of an educational film, the young girl told her teacher that she wanted to “do like in Arras”, in reference to the assassination of Professor Dominique Bernard. She then showed a knife with a 17-centimeter blade. The teacher first evacuated her class before seeing the student chasing her with the weapon. Alerted to the situation, a senior education advisor and a college mediator managed to disarm and control the young girl before the police intervened.
The knife had been used during the family breakfast
Several elements suggest that this action was deliberate, in particular the testimonies of classmates, who clearly indicated that the 12-year-old schoolgirl had made it known “that she was considering killing her English teacher” the week former. She had repeated in the morning “that it was a beautiful day because she was going to kill the teacher”, adds the prosecutor, who specifies that her classmates did not “believe her”. In the suspect’s satchel, a notebook was also found with this inscription: “dear diary, I want to kill this (insulting comment). 8:45 a.m.: kill.”
According to the Rennes public prosecutor’s office, the impressive knife with which the schoolgirl threatened her teacher had been used the same morning during the family breakfast. “There is reason to think that she took it afterwards, before going to college,” says the prosecutor. At the start of the year, the student had already been expelled from the Chalais college, in Rennes, for having attacked a teacher and bringing a knife into the establishment.
What discernment for such a young child?
The eldest of four children, she suffers from behavioral and communication disorders. A question remains central to this issue. Was the schoolgirl capable of discernment (read framed) ? If the experts believe that this was not the case, the young girl cannot be tried. “At this stage, a certain degree of discernment appears to exist, but this analytical work will have to continue within the framework of judicial information,” warns the prosecutor.
A second legal procedure was initiated at the request of the Rennes public prosecutor’s office. Conducted in civil proceedings, it resulted in the appointment of a children’s judge who will have to examine the placement order taken by the public prosecutor’s office for the benefit of the Ille-et-Vilaine departmental council. She will be taken care of by child welfare after her hospitalization.