14-Year-Old Boy Detained After Principal and Teacher Shot at Southern France Middle School

A 14-year-old student in southern France is suspected of shooting his middle school principal and a teacher after breaking up with his girlfriend. Police took the teenager into custody following the Monday, October 12, incident. Prosecutors said he used a shotgun concealed in a guitar case to fire at the Joseph Lakanal middle school in Aubagne. A staff member subdued and disarmed the boy after shots were fired on two floors, prosecutors said. Police then detained him. Such shootings by pupils are uncommon in France. Marseille prosecutor Nicolas Bessone said in a statement that the pupil fired one or two rounds on the first floor, striking the principal and the teacher in their legs. Marseille deputy prosecutor Audrey Jouaneton and police said the wounds came from pellets of the type used in 12-gauge shotguns. Both were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries. Jouaneton said the boy’s reasons remained unclear. “We still don’t have sufficiently precise evidence to say that he wanted to target the teaching staff — this principal and the teacher — but they were in any case hit by the shots,” she said. The boy went to the second floor and fired twice more, according to Bessone: once in an area in front of a teacher and once inside a classroom, where a teaching board was struck. No teachers or students in the classroom were hit, but they were “very shocked,” Bessone said. A staff member stopped the boy in a stairwell, an action Jouaneton described with praise as showing “extreme courage.” On X, French President Emmanuel Macron commended the staff’s “composure and exemplary response,” saying they “prevented an even worse outcome.” Counseling for mental health was made available to students. Police said there was no immediate indication linking the shooting to weeks of protests by high school students seeking better-funded schools. The middle school was not affected by the protests on Monday, police added. On X, Education Minister Édouard Geffray wrote that “this unacceptable act once again highlights the rise of unbridled violence in our society, against which we must all mobilize. In words as well as deeds.”