A 13-year-old student allegedly attacked a teacher in the face with pepper spray and then stabbed her at a high school in Rome this Friday, according to the newspaper La Stampa, citing the country’s national police. The student recorded the incident with a helmet equipped with a camera, according to the initial reconstruction by the authorities. The victim is 66 years old and is in a state of shock, but her life is not in danger, several Italian media outlets report.
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The attacker arrived at the school with two knives in his backpack and went into the bathroom to put on the helmet with the camera. Once inside the classroom, he sprayed pepper gas in the teacher’s face and then stabbed her with the knives, according to an initial reconstruction by La Stampa based on police reports. The woman suffered injuries to her arms and lungs before another student managed to stop the attack. The young man was arrested and is in police custody.
This is the second incident of this kind in Italy so far this year, after a teacher was stabbed by one of her students in Bergamo, in the north of the country. The attack was broadcast on social media.
The footage recorded by the student was later deleted, and the authorities have not been able to determine the exact purpose of the recording, according to the Italian newspaper. It is considered possible that the student was live streaming via Telegram. Investigators found a video watched by the boy about Brenton Tarrant, the perpetrator of the massacre at the Christchurch mosques in New Zealand, which may have inspired him, according to the reconstruction cited by La Stampa.
According to testimonies from some of his classmates to this Italian media outlet, the young man resented the teacher because she had failed him in a subject. The students say the student had talked about attacking her before, but they had not taken him seriously.
The young attacker “seems to be a quiet boy, without any particular problems,” according to a statement from the Italian Ministry of Education. The note also refers to the influence of social networks and violent websites that the young man “has recently approached” and that “may have played a role in the incident.” Following the attack, the Minister of Education, Giuseppe Valditara, reiterated his support for banning access to social networks for those under 15 years old and pointed out that the European Commission’s Child Rights Law is heading in the right direction.
