A 17-year-old student armed with three firearms and two “grenades,” shot his school’s headmaster and a number of other victims before being taken into custody in an afternoon attack on Alexis de Tocqueville school in the town of Grasse in southern France today.
One person has been arrested after a shooting at a high school in south-east France, authorities said Thursday.
An elite police operations unit was at the scene at the Alexis de Tocqueville school in the town of Grasse, the Prefecture of Alpes-Maritimes said.
CNN’s French affiliate BFMTV reported that a 17-year-old armed with a rifle, a handgun, a revolver and two grenades entered the high school at about lunchtime and opened fire at the headteacher.
Two people are injured, including the headteacher, according to BFMTV, and the armed individual has been arrested.
The school has been evacuated and is currently being searched, BFMTV said.
French journalists suggest that the suspect was obsessed with mass murder, Satanism, and the Columbine High School massacre.
#Grasse Le suspect s'intéressait à la tuerie du lycée américain de Columbine, en 1999, à en croire ses publications sur les réseaux sociaux
— Soren Seelow (@soren_seelow) March 16, 2017
#Grasse Le suspect interpellé regardait des vidéos de tueries de masse, selon les premières constatations sur ses comptes internet (police)
— Soren Seelow (@soren_seelow) March 16, 2017
La dernière photo postée sur Facebook par le tireur présumé #Grasse https://t.co/yAYE2mIVQP pic.twitter.com/YXD41nNQco
— Nice-Matin (@Nice_Matin) March 16, 2017
Students report hearing 3-4 shots in the attack.
Casualty estimates have ranged wildly, but it now appears that only the school’s headmaster and another student (maybe two) have been wounded in the incident.
The attack was (and pardon me for computer-assisted, on-the-fly translations) apparently carried out with some sort of hunting rifle. The student was also in possession of a pair of handguns, but they don’t appear to be fired. Several stories I read referenced “plaster grenades,” which I suspect refers to some sort of homemade device similar to a pipe bomb or Molotov Cocktail, and not actual military hand grenades. Had the suspect been armed with automatic weapons showing that he had access to military arms I’d give the “grenade” angle more credence.
French counterterrorism police are presently sweeping the scene to ensure there are no more devices, but it currently appears that that scene is contained and the suspect in custody operated alone.
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