Jean-Luc Boujon, correspondent in Chenôve (Côte-d’Or) / Photo credit: ARNAUD FINISTRE / AFP
Astonishment still dominates this Monday morning in this Côte-d’Or establishment. Friday, a 3rd grade student threatened, with a knife, the principal of the Édouard-Herriot college located in Chenôve, near Dijon. Nicole Belloubet, the Minister of National Education, went there this Monday at midday to support the educational team.
The tenant from rue de Grenelle spent at least an hour and a half at the school where she met all the staff, first and foremost the principal under threat whom she assured of her support. “The principal has a lot of courage. She is very active, very close to her teachers and all the staff and very eager to plan for the future. She obviously needs support, but that’s what that we came here to testify to him,” declared the minister.
“He wasn’t like everyone else”
To support the staff, but also to support the students, some of whom, accompanied by their parents for the resumption this Monday, were still in shock. Like Matthis, 13, and his mother, Virginie. “I was a little stressed at first. I thought it was an exercise and then I understood that it was real,” confides the young teenager. “Today, like any parent, we are apprehensive about what is happening. But the team is present, they are supervised and then we have to continue. So, we are going to go there,” asks his mother.
Some students, like Sélim and Yanis, knew the attacker. “He seemed a little strange and it’s not trivial. It’s not that it was going to be that serious, but I wasn’t surprised. He wasn’t like everyone else,” testifies one of ‘between them. “He was already aggressive, he threatened the principal, he threatened everyone. He could have killed the principal who had the right reflex,” believes this schoolboy. Indicted, the attacker spent his first night in pre-trial detention.