On a Monday morning in southern France, a shocking act of school violence left two school staff injured and triggered an immediate law enforcement and government response, after a 14-year-old student opened fire on campus at Lakanal middle school in Aubagne, a small city roughly 11 miles east of Marseille.
Regional officials confirmed to local French media that the teenage suspect entered the school grounds carrying a shotgun hidden inside a guitar case. After opening fire on school personnel, the boy was quickly subdued by a brave member of the school’s staff before any further harm could be done to the school’s 600-plus student body.
Aubagne Mayor Jean-Pierre Squillari confirmed that no students were harmed in the incident, and the two injured teachers are receiving medical treatment for non-life-threatening wounds. Detailed accounts from Marseille prosecutor Nicolas Bessone outline that the 53-year-old principal suffered gunshot wounds to the leg and lower back, while a 37-year-old teacher was hit in the thigh. A third individual on campus sustained minor injuries, and students and staff in adjacent areas of the school escaped physical harm but reported severe psychological distress.
After the initial shooting on the school’s first floor, Bessone said the suspect moved to the second floor where he fired two additional rounds: one at the floor in front of a third teacher, and a second inside an occupied classroom that struck a chalkboard. No one was hit in these rounds, though the people present left the encounter deeply shaken. The teenager was eventually restrained in a school corridor and taken into police custody.
In a post-incident update shared on social media, Squillari noted that all students were placed in immediate lockdown and secured within seconds of the first shots being fired. On-site psychological support services were activated immediately to help students and staff process the traumatic event. Squillari told reporters that most students did not witness the shooting directly, as it unfolded in a school hallway, but many still showed signs of psychological distress that are being addressed by mental health professionals. He added that the suspect was a regular student at the school, and the only known pre-incident contact was a meeting request the boy’s father had submitted to the school’s educational advisor, with no further context available as of Monday.
Two student witnesses told French broadcaster BFMTV they encountered the suspect just after the shooting began, when a fire alarm pulled them into the hallway. The students said the teenager was roughly a meter away from them carrying a hunting rifle, fired a round into the ground, and followed the group briefly as they fled the hallway screaming.
French law enforcement officials have launched an attempted murder investigation into the shooting. Local police sources told regional media the incident is not linked to the ongoing national protests over poor school infrastructure and working conditions in the French education system. After searching the suspect’s family home, law enforcement recovered a cache of weapons and took both of the boy’s parents into custody, a fact later confirmed by French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez.
During an on-site visit Monday alongside Education Minister Édouard Geffray, Nunez announced that the school would remain closed to all students on Tuesday to allow for investigative work and mental health support for affected staff. French President Emmanuel Macron issued a public statement extending his full solidarity and support to the shaken school community, praising the quick, calm response of the school’s educational team that prevented what could have been a far deadlier outcome.
Geffray echoed Macron’s remarks in a social media post, calling the shooting an unacceptable act of violence that underscores a growing trend of unregulated violence in French society, an issue that requires collective action from all sectors of the nation.