The student who stabbed his Spanish teacher to death on Wednesday in Saint-Jean-de-Luz was indicted on Friday for murder and placed in pre-trial detention, but his lawyer wonders about his degree of criminal responsibility. The “personal motivations” of the 16-year-old teenager, unknown to the judicial services, “need to be probed, assessed, tested by psychiatrists”, in order to determine whether his discernment was “entire”, or “on the contrary abolished , or possibly altered”, declared to the press Me Thierry Sagardoytho at the exit of the judicial court of Bayonne.
In police custody, the second-grade student who stabbed his teacher Agnès Lassalle, 52, with a kitchen knife hidden in a roll of paper towel, “brought forward a little voice that speaks to him”, had declared Thursday the public prosecutor in Bayonne, Jérôme Bourrier. According to the first statements of the teenager, who was detained in a penitentiary establishment for minors according to a press release from the prosecution, she “incites him to do evil and would have suggested to him the day before to commit an assassination”, had added the magistrate.
“Ravaged by the gesture he committed”
Jérôme Bourrier had also indicated that a first examination of the pupil in police custody had revealed “a form of reactive anxiety which could disturb his discernment” and “elements of depression evolving for a year”, but “no mental illness of schizophrenia type, manic state, melancholia or mental retardation, or acute psychiatric decompensation”. “The teenager appears accessible to criminal liability subject to the expert opinions which will have to be ordered and a possible alteration of his discernment”, added the prosecutor.
For the lawyer, this expertise “completely ignores the suicide attempt” of the teenager in October 2022, mentioned by the prosecutor, “and the medical prescriptions of which he was the object”. This suicide attempt “considerably raises questions in view of what he is accused of today”, he continued. “Was the care appropriate? Were warning signs detected? Obviously not.” “When he tells the facts, in my opinion it is not he who acts. When speaking in the third person of oneself, I wonder about a possible dissociation of personality”, adds Me Sagardoytho.
The teenager “is obviously devastated by the act he has committed and which he is accused of”, also underlined the lawyer, painting the portrait of a “brilliant boy in the scientific disciplines, visibly less at ease in the Spanish language”. According to the prosecutor, the teenager admitted in police custody “a form of animosity towards his teacher” but also mentioned “acts of harassment” suffered in his previous establishment, a public college in the city, and “an argument” the day before with another student.
A “sometimes arrogant” or “angry” boy
One of his former ninth-graders described him as “a shy boy” who had “two or three friends but not many more”. “Sometimes arrogant” or “choleric”, he did not “like being taken back by the teachers in class”, according to her. Thursday afternoon in colleges and high schools that are not on vacation, a minute of silence was observed in tribute to the teacher, described as “very dedicated” by the Minister of Education Pap Ndiaye, “very nice” and “listening” by one of his students. She “adored her students, loved her job”, for her part testified Stéphane, the companion of Agnès Lassalle at the microphone of France Inter. “And she was adored by them.”
His death shocked the educational community, just over two years after the assassination of Samuel Paty, a history and geography teacher beheaded by a young radicalized Islamist. Friday morning, at 8 a.m., the students of the Saint-Thomas d’Aquin college-high school, a private Catholic establishment renowned for its calm and its academic results, again flocked at the time of the opening of the gate, under the eyes of three policemen posted at the entrance.
“All the students are coming back today, in an atmosphere that is still very collected and support still in place, with school medicine and National Education psychologists. The psychological aid emergency unit is also available, to come back if necessary,” said Vincent Destais, diocesan director of Catholic education in Bayonne. “We are trying to resume a normal life and lessons as far as possible with the students,” he also told an AFP correspondent.