Knife attack on school in Slovakia: teacher killed, assailant killed by police

Steph Deschamps / June 13, 2020

A teacher died Thursday after being stabbed in an elementary school in central Slovakia, police said, adding that the assailant had been killed by police.

The police identified the assailant as a 22-year-old man and former student of this school located in the city of Vrutky (center) about 180 km northeast of Bratislava, without immediately specifying his motives. .

The teacher who was killed was the vice-principal of the school. Among the injured was also a teacher, seriously injured.

The police opened fire on the assailant, killing him about 200 meters from the school. "He broke the glass door to enter, the staff tried to block it and he used a knife he had brought with him," said Slovak police chief Milan Lucansky on his official Facebook page. .

He inflicted a fatal injury on an assistant director and injured a warden, then entered the building where he seriously injured a teacher and two children who he stabbed multiple times, "he said. for follow-up. "He then tried to escape while the guard was running to catch him. A police officer chased him but he tried to defend himself with the knife, so (the police) used their weapons and killed him, "he added.

The injured were hospitalized in the nearby town of Martin.

Slovak Prime Minister Igor Matovic extended his "sincere condolences" to the family of the victim. "The Minister of the Interior is going there and I think he will provide us with more details later," Matovic told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of leaders from four central European countries in Lednice, in the Czech Republic.