Dijon: police custody of schoolboy, who threatened his principal with a knife, extended

Europe 1 with AFP // Photo credit: Loic Venance/AFP 4:36 p.m., March 16, 2024

The custody of a 15-year-old student, arrested Friday afternoon after threatening the principal of a college in the suburbs of Dijon with a knife, without injuring her, was extended on Saturday afternoon, we learned from the Dijon public prosecutor's office.

“I inform you of the extension of the custody of the minor in the procedure in question,” said the public prosecutor, Olivier Caracotch, in a press release.

The latter should continue until Sunday, according to the magistrate.

The terrorist qualification is not retained at this stage

“Described as difficult”, the teenager, “who provided no explanation of his motivations”, is heard for the offenses of “death threats, violence with a weapon in a school establishment resulting in incapacity of less than eight days , introduction of a weapon into a school establishment", according to the prosecution.

The terrorist qualification is not accepted at this stage, the same source added, specifying that the student has so far only had "a criminal record for acts of willful damage".

According to the rectorate, interviewed on Saturday by AFP, "eight college staff and eight students, direct witnesses", went on Saturday morning to the medico-psychological emergency unit (CUMP) installed at the Édouard Herriot college in Chenôve, where the events took place on Friday shortly after 3 p.m.

It will make way on Monday morning for a listening unit within this 330-place college in a sensitive area, where students will be received from 10 a.m. by their main teachers before classes resume at 11 a.m.

Two additional security personnel will be present, it was added.

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Friday afternoon, the young suspect showed up for a language course, "from which he had been excluded a few days earlier", according to the prosecution.

Directed towards the principal of the college, he presented her with “a letter mentioning a hostage-taking and reference to the attacks of November 2015” in the Paris region before “pointing a knife in her direction and verbally threatening her with death” .

The manager then managed to escape by triggering the intruder alarm.

The schoolboy had tried to join his class, but the latter was confined, like the entire establishment.

The classroom door being closed, he had threatened "with his weapon a maintenance agent who came to support" before "attempting to lock himself with him in the office" of the principal, "hence the agent still managed to escape", according to the same source.

Remaining in the corridor, the teenager was finally arrested by the police after half an hour.

The Minister of Education, Nicole Belloubet, among other political figures, "condemned with the greatest firmness" these threats, "saluting the courage and composure" of the principal.