A 13-year-old boy armed with a crossbow and a machete has killed a teacher in Barcelona. Another teacher and two pupils were wounded in the attack.



The incident happened at 9.15am on Monday at the Joan Fuster secondary school in La Sagrera, a district in the north of the city.

Witnesses said the boy arrived late for school and that, when a female teacher opened the door, he fired the crossbow at her face. The boy, who was dressed in camouflage gear, is then said to have fired at the teacher’s daughter, a student in the class.

“We were just starting the class and suddenly we heard screams,” student Gemma Jarque told the Associated Press. “So we shut ourselves inside our classroom in order to be safe.”

Hearing the cries, another teacher reportedly rushed to the scene and was trying to protect his colleague when the boy attacked him. He fell to the ground and died. The man, who has not been named, was a supply teacher covering for a social sciences teacher’s absence and had been at the school for little more than a week.

A regional police spokeswoman, who did not want to be named, said the boy had a crossbow and a machete, but she was unable to say which weapon caused the man’s death.

Jarque said she and others hid in her classroom after hearing the screams. “We saw the teacher lying on the floor in a pool of blood,” she said.

Witnesses said the boy then went to another classroom where he threatened a second-year pupil with a knife. Shortly afterwards the gym teacher found him in the corridor where he was preparing a petrol bomb.

Instituto Joan Fuster’s principal, Dolors Perramon (centre) speaks to reporters next to Barcelona’s mayor, Xavier Trias (left), and Catalan regional education minister, Irene Rigau. Photograph: Toni Garriga/EPA

“I hear voices; I want to stop all the voices,” the boy is reported to have said. The gym teacher, who was aware the boy had been having personal difficulties, tried to calm him until the police arrived.

However, a teacher at the school who did not wish to be named described the boy as “very friendly to teachers”, adding that he never played truant from school.



The three injured people were taken to hospital but their wounds are not thought to be serious. The boy has been arrested but, as he is 13, he will not face criminal charges. In Spain, the age of criminal responsibility is 18, although in some cases younger people may be held criminally responsible for their actions.

The school’s headteacher Dolors Perramon, flanked by the Barcelona mayor and the Catalan education minister, has expressed her “deep sorrow” over the incident. She said no classes would be held on Tuesday but that students would attend school for counselling. The school was closed on Monday in tribute to the teacher who was killed.



It is the first case of a teacher being killed by a pupil in Spain. The incident has shocked Barcelona, a city where crimes of violence are relatively rare.











