A terrible tragedy. Friday October 13, 2023, Dominique Bernard, 57-year-old French teacher, was killed by Mohammed M., 20 years old. It was in the Gambetta high school, in Arras, that the attack took place. The teacher was stabbed to death while trying to stop the individual so that he could not enter the classroom. The next day, Béatrice, a cleaning lady who has worked alongside him for 25 years, testified on television. In the show Seven to Eighton TF1she remembered: “Every Tuesday I have my tea before he leaves for class“she began. “He talked about his classes, his students and sometimes with a lot of humor. We had some real laughs. The patience he had… he was such a kind person, a good listener, such a pacifist”, Beatrice continued. Like all the people who knew Dominique Bernard, Béatrice is devastated. “It’s not possible that this happened to him. He was there at the wrong time and he took the hits. I think he behaved as he was supposed to.”
“I went to contact the attacker believing that he only had a knife”
A moving testimony which echoes that of Christian, maintenance agent within the establishment, who tried to intervene to arrest Mohammed M. For our colleagues from BFMTVon Sunday October 15, 2023, he agreed to confide in this terrible scene. “We got up to go see what was happening. And there, we thought we saw a fight between students because when there are fights, they tend to go and see what’s happening. But there , I have a colleague who started screaming, ‘there’s a man with a knife, you have to lock yourself in, he’s stabbing people'”. He then remembers seeing a sports teacher, injured. “We didn’t know any more, so we all went back and closed the doors”he says. “I came back down, I saw the assailant who was still with the teacher, I took a chair, without thinking, I went out, and I went to contact the assailant, believing that he was not only had one knife. Christian will then find himself on the ground. While the assailant was going “jump on”, he managed to “push back with the feet”. His boss then intervened. Unfortunately, the latter will also fall. The assailant will take the opportunity to stab him several times.. “The police arrived, ran after the attacker. They tased him, afterward, we were confined.” A terrifying testimony.