Teenager shoots headmaster and teacher at French middle school

A 14-year-old boy opened fire with a hunting gun at a middle school in southern France on Monday, wounding the headmaster and a teacher before a member of staff disarmed him, local authorities said.

The shooting happened at the Joseph-Lakanal middle school in Aubagne, near Marseille, where a third person was grazed by gunfire, police said, The Express Tribune reported, citing AFP. The headmaster, 53, and the teacher, 37, were not in critical condition.

A gun in a guitar case

The suspect “came in carrying a bag which was a guitar case. He clearly removed a weapon from this guitar case, a long gun,” said Marseille’s deputy public prosecutor Audrey Jouaneton. He fired at least four shots, including inside a classroom where teachers and pupils were present, leaving a mark on a blackboard, she said.

“The suspect, for reasons as yet unknown, fired at the headteacher, who was hit by a shower of pellets in the thighs and lower back,” said Jacques Witkowski, prefect of the Bouches-du-Rhone region. He then fired at a second teacher, who was hit by buckshot in the thigh, before a member of staff disarmed him.

Witkowski said the boy “is not known for any history of delinquency or radicalisation”.

“Only for the teachers”

Sarah, a pupil at the school, said she heard the fire alarm during her Spanish lesson and went into the corridor, where she and her classmates “bumped into” the gunman. “He started shooting and said: ‘I’ve only come for the teachers, not for the pupils,’” she told AFP.

Parents in custody

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez, who visited the school, said the suspect’s parents had been taken into custody. Investigators were “trying to understand how this young person ended up in a position with this gun”, he said.

Authorities said there did not appear to be any link with the high school protests that have swept France in recent weeks. “The middle school was not affected by the high school students’ protest,” police told AFP.

Leaders praise staff

President Emmanuel Macron praised the teachers for their quick reaction. “I commend the composure and exemplary response of the teaching staff, which helped to prevent the worst from happening,” he wrote on X.

Education Minister Edouard Geffray, who also went to the scene, called for action against such violence. “All this seems to sit within a global social phenomenon,” he said. “We have to provide a societal response… Schools can’t do everything, schools cannot treat major violence.”

A spate of attacks on teachers

French schools have seen a series of violent incidents in recent months, prompting bag checks at the entrance of some schools:

• February 2026: a 14-year-old stabbed a 60-year-old art teacher at least three times in southern France, leaving the teacher in critical condition
• June 2025: a 14-year-old student fatally stabbed a teaching assistant in eastern France
• April 2025: a student carried out a stabbing spree in several classrooms, wounding a girl and three other pupils

Why it matters

A member of staff stopped this attack before anyone was killed, but it is the latest in a run of violence against teachers by young teenagers in France. Ministers now face hard questions about how a 14-year-old got hold of a gun and how schools can be kept safe. Read our explainer on France’s high school protests.

This article draws on reporting by The Express Tribune and AFP.