Many on high alert after school shooting

PARIS — A heavily armed student opened fire and wounded four people Thursday at a high school in the southern French city of Grasse, officials said.

Six others were slightly injured in the clamor to escape the school building, officials said.

The student, whose identity was not released, was subsequently arrested, a spokesman for France’s National Police confirmed to The Washington Post.

An Interior Ministry spokesman, speaking on French television, said the suspect is a 17-year-old male student at the Lycée Alexis de Tocqueville in Grasse. He was in possession of a rifle, two handguns and two grenades when arrested, the spokesman said.

At a news conference late Thursday afternoon in Grasse, Nadja VallaudBelkacem, France’s education minister, called the attack “the crazy action of a fragile young man fascinated by weapons.”

The Grasse prosecutor also told reporters that the suspect’s motivations “seem to be related to poor relationships with other students. It seemed to be difficult to integrate.”

Among the wounded was the “heroic” principal of the Lycée Tocqueville, who, according to VallaudBelkacem, rushed to the scene to try to reason with the student when he saw him pull a gun.

The four victims who suffered gunshot wounds were taken to hospitals, officials said.

Grasse is about 20 miles inland from the French Riviera.

Another student at Lycée Tocqueville, identified only as Benjamin, 16, told the Nice-Matin newspaper that the shooting occurred Thursday during the school’s lunch hour, just before 1 p.m.

“Around 12:40, I was sitting down, finishing eating,” he told the newspaper. “I heard this loud bang and then two more. I turned around, and I saw someone in the courtyard with a shotgun, shooting. He was firing on the windows of the classrooms overlooking the courtyard. When I saw that, I ran away.”

Interviewed on France’s BFM Television, Andréas, another student at the school, described a scene of “total panic” that began with four loud shots.

“We started running,” he said. “We would have thought we were in a film. In the hall, there were traces of blood.”

The suspect was of “European” origin, a spokesman for the National Police told The Post.

There was no immediate word of any link to Islamist terrorism. Christian Estrosi, president of the Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur administrative region, which includes Grasse, said Thursday’s shooting was “absolutely not” a terrorist attack.