AUBAGNE, France — French police detained a 14-year-old boy suspected of opening fire Monday on his middle school principal and a teacher with a shotgun that he hid in a guitar case, wounding both in a rare school shooting, prosecutors said.
A staff member at the Joseph Lakanal middle school in Aubagne disarmed the boy after he fired multiple shots while roaming on two floors of the school, prosecutors said. Police then took him into custody. Aubagne is about 15 kilometers (9 miles) east of the Mediterranean port city of Marseille.
Gun violence perpetrated by pupils in schools is rare in France.
Marseille prosecutor Nicolas Bessone said in a statement that the pupil fired once or twice on the first floor, wounding the principal and the teacher in the legs. They were hit with pellets used in 12-gauge shotguns, according to Marseille deputy prosecutor Audrey Jouaneton and police. They were transported to a hospital with injuries that weren’t life threatening.
The boy’s motives were unknown, Jouaneton said.
“We still don’t have sufficiently precise evidence to say that he wanted to target the teaching staff -- this principal and the teacher -- but they were in any case hit by the shots,” she said.
The boy then went to the second floor and opened fire again, twice -- the first at the floor in front of a teacher and the second in a classroom, hitting the teaching board. The shots didn’t hit any teachers or the pupils in the classroom, but they were “very shocked,” Bessone said.
The boy was then intercepted by a staff member in a stairwell, with what Jouaneton praised as “extreme courage.”
In a post on X, French President Emmanuel Macron praised the staff’s “composure and exemplary response,” saying they “prevented an even worse outcome.”
Mental health counseling was offered to pupils.
There was no immediate information to suggest that the shooting was in any way connected to protests by high school pupils demanding better-resourced schools that have been shaking France for several weeks.
The middle school wasn’t impacted on Monday by the protests, police said.
On X, Education Minister Edouard Geffray posted that “this unacceptable act once again highlights the rise of unbridled violence in our society, against which we must all mobilize. In words as well as deeds.”
Still, such events remain uncommon. In 2017, a 16-year-old student armed with a rifle, pistols and a small grenade opened fire at a high school in southern France, wounding three students and the principal.
Stabbings by pupils in schools are also unusual. Last year, a middle school employee in eastern France was stabbed to death by a 14-year-old student during a bag check.
Also in 2025, a 15-year-old student stabbed four other students at a high school in western France, killing one and wounding three others before he was arrested.
The Associated Press
