French authorities investigating the killing of a French teacher and the attempted murder of a 13-year-old student who were stabbed in the face and neck, concluded Wednesday that the men stabbed the man as they stalked him because they thought he would kill them.
The French daily newspaper Le Monde reported, citing the prosecutor’s office in the southwestern city of Nantes, that the attacker fled after the teachers yelled “God is great” in Arabic. The teacher, Benjamin Cazenueve, worked at a public school in the city and was the dean of the French high school English department. The 15-year-old student was seriously injured but is expected to survive.
The police have identified the attacker as Mohammed Bouyeri, 26, who was born in Algeria. Investigators found a knife in the backpack he carried with him, The Guardian reported.
The French daily newspaper Le Parisien reported that Bouyeri had a record of attacking security officers in the resort town of Cannes, located on the Mediterranean coast south of Paris. The newspaper reported that he is originally from Barcelona.
“The killer, I am pretty sure, would have stabbed one or two more people,” Nantes prosecutor Eric Maillaud said on France Info radio. He acknowledged that Bouyeri was paranoid schizophrenic.
Local media have reported Bouyeri’s family history, starting with his grandfather, in a small village of about 50 people near the Tunisian border.
In addition to providing information about Bouyeri, Le Parisien has the first words of the students who survived the attack.
