The 16-year-old student who stabbed a teacher in the middle of a lesson in south-west France, a case that rocked the French education community just over two years after the killing of Samuel Paty, a young radicalized Islamist who was beheaded by a teacher, was revealed on Friday charged with murder and taken into custody.
• Also read: Homage to teacher killed in her class, attacker evokes “a small voice”.
• Also read: Teacher stabbed to death by student in France
But his lawyer wonders about his criminal liability. The adolescent’s “personal motives, unknown to legal services, must be examined, evaluated and tested by psychiatrists” to determine whether his judgment was “complete” or “on the contrary, nullified or possibly altered,” the press explained Me Thierry Sagardoytho at the exit of the Bayonne court.
While in police custody, the second student who stabbed his Spanish teacher Agnès Lassalle, 52, with a kitchen knife hidden in a roll of paper towels in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, a seaside resort on the Atlantic coast, “put up a small voice.” who speaks to him,” said Bayonne prosecutor Jérôme Bourrier on Thursday.
According to the first testimony of the teenager, who was in custody in a juvenile detention center, she “encouraged him to do evil and would have suggested to him the day before that he carry out an assassination attempt,” the judge added.
Mr Bourrier had also indicated that an initial examination of the student while in police custody had revealed “a form of reactive anxiety which could impair his judgement” and “evolving elements of depression for a year” but “no mental illness schizophrenia, manic state, melancholy or mental retardation or acute psychiatric decompensation”.
“The juvenile appears subject to criminal liability pending the report to be ordered and a possible change in his judgement,” the prosecutor added.
For the lawyer, this report completely disregards “the teenager’s attempted suicide referred to by the public prosecutor’s office” in October 2022 “and the medical orders to which he was subject”.
This attempted suicide “raises significant questions in light of what he is being accused of today,” he continued. “Was the care adequate? Were warning signs recognized? Obviously not”.
“If he’s stating the facts, I don’t think it’s him who’s acting. When I speak of myself in the third person, I wonder about possible personality dissociation,” adds Me Sagardoytho.
The teenager “is obviously devastated by the crime he has committed and is accused of,” the lawyer also underlined, drawing the portrait of a “brilliant boy in scientific disciplines who is visibly less comfortable with the Spanish language”. .
According to prosecutors, the teenager in police custody admitted to “a form of hostility towards his teacher” but also mentioned “harassment” he suffered at his previous facility, a public college in the same city. Luz, and “a fight” the day before with another student.
One of his former ninth graders described him as “a shy boy” who “had two or three friends, but not many more.” “Sometimes arrogant” or “choleric,” he didn’t like being “taken back too much by the teachers in the class,” she says.
On Thursday afternoon, colleges and high schools that do not have vacations held a minute’s silence in honor of the teacher, who was described as “very dedicated” by Education Minister Pap Ndiaye, “very kind” and “listening” by one of his students.
She “adored her students, loved her job,” testified Stéphane, Ms Lassalle’s companion on the France Inter Radio microphone.
His death shocked the educational community, just over two years after the assassination of Samuel Paty, a history and geography teacher, who was beheaded by a young radicalized Islamist.
Attacks on teachers are common in France, but AFP has recorded fewer than a dozen killings over the past four decades.
At 8 a.m. Friday morning, students at Saint-Thomas d’Aquin collegiate high school, a private Catholic institution known for its tranquility and academic results, again streamed under the eyes of three at the entrance at the time the gate opened posted police officers. Some had a flower in their hand.