PARIS A 50-year-old Spanish teacher was killed while teaching her high school classaround 10 this morning, stabbed in the heart by one of her pupils, aged 16, under the eyes of her classmates.
The tragedy occurred in French Basque Country in Saint Jean de Luz, a small city on the Atlantic a few kilometers from the Spanish border to the south and from the well-known tourist resort Biarritz to the north. The school is the Saint Thomas d’Aquin private Catholic high school, which has a reputation for being an excellent, very quiet establishment in a city with a high quality of life.
The boy was immediately blocked and arrested, his classmates initially confined to their classrooms. The woman was rushed to hospital but did not survive cardio-circulatory arrest. According to a source close to the investigation, the motive would be to be found in a psychiatric disorder, because the high school student allegedly said he had heard voices asking him to kill the teacher.
French Education Minister Pap Ndiaye reacted on Twitter by speaking of “immense emotion” and is on his way to the spot. A former student spoke of the victim’s personality: “A very demanding but not too strict teacher, so far she had never had any problems with students”.