The head teacher of Joseph-Lakanal secondary school in Aubagne, in the Bouches-du-Rhône department of southern France, and a teacher were wounded by gunfire inside the school on the morning of Monday 12 October, according to BFM. A 14-year-old boy has been detained on suspicion of carrying out the shooting, BFM reports.
The head teacher, aged 53, was struck in the right hip by a shotgun round, while a 37-year-old teacher was hit in the thigh. The teacher's injury came from a ricochet, according to information from BFM Marseille Provence and BFM. At least four shots were heard.
The Marseille prosecutor's office has opened an investigation into attempted murder, BFM learned, and the city's public prosecutor is travelling to the scene. The detained teenager is enrolled at the school.
Firefighters attended the site, and a source close to the case told BFM that the lives of the two wounded staff members are not in danger. No pupils were hurt, the mayor of Aubagne, Jean-Pierre Squillari, confirmed to reporters at the school.
Why it matters
The incident has drawn an immediate response from the top of the French state. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez, National Education Minister Édouard Geffray and Sabrina Roubache, the junior minister for vocational education, training and apprenticeships, were all due to visit Aubagne on Monday afternoon, BFM reports. Le Monde also reported that Nuñez and Geffray were making the trip.
Geffray described the attack as unacceptable and said it once again demonstrated the growth of unbridled violence in French society. Writing on X, he said the education ministry would, as always, stand united and strong around a school community that had been severely tested.
The presence of three ministers at a single secondary school underlines how seriously the government is treating an attack in which the targets were the staff responsible for running and teaching in the building.
What investigators have said so far
Authorities moved quickly to rule out a link to wider unrest in French schools. A source close to the investigation and the prefecture of Bouches-du-Rhône both told BFM that the shooting had no connection to the pupil-led protest movement. Joseph-Lakanal was not affected by any blockade at the time, BFM reports.
That distinction matters because the shooting took place during a period of disruption in parts of the French school system, and officials appear keen to prevent the Aubagne case from being folded into that broader story.
The prefect of Bouches-du-Rhône, the mayor of Aubagne and the regional education authority chief were already outside the school, where large numbers of parents had gathered after learning that shots had been fired inside the building.
A school community left shaken
Aubagne sits east of Marseille in the Bouches-du-Rhône, and Joseph-Lakanal is a neighbourhood secondary school whose pupils are typically between 11 and 15 years old. The age of the suspect — 14 — places him within the school's ordinary pupil population, and BFM reports that he was enrolled there.
The sequence described by BFM is brief and contained within the school grounds: shots fired in the morning, two members of staff wounded, a teenage suspect detained, and emergency services treating the injured on site. Beyond that, the reporting does not yet establish a motive, and no account of what preceded the shooting has been made public.
What is known is that the two people wounded were adults responsible for the school's daily operation — its head teacher and a classroom teacher — and that the pupils present were not physically harmed. The mayor's confirmation on that point was among the first pieces of information given to waiting parents.
The wounded pair were taken into the care of firefighters. A source close to the case told BFM their prognosis is not life-threatening, a detail that will shape how the case develops in the coming days.
What happens next
The attempted murder investigation now sits with the Marseille prosecutor's office, and the arrival of the public prosecutor at the scene signals that magistrates are treating the case as a serious criminal matter rather than an incident to be handled internally by the school system. The suspect, a minor, will move through France's specialised justice arrangements for juveniles, though no further detail on his questioning has been reported.
The ministerial visit on Monday afternoon will bring national attention to Aubagne and is likely to generate further statements on school safety. For now, the confirmed facts remain limited: two staff members wounded by shotgun fire, a 14-year-old pupil in custody, an attempted murder inquiry open, and a school community waiting for answers about how a weapon was brought into a secondary school and used against the people who run it.
