An 18-year-old Turkish former student stabbed a teacher and a student at the Campus Vert d’Azur high school in Antibes, southern France, on Wednesday afternoon, despite having been on a national security watchlist and previously hospitalized for psychiatric and extremist threats.
The attacker, named as Ekin A., entered the school at around 1:30 p.m. armed with a kitchen knife and lunged at a 52-year-old English teacher, stabbing her three times. He then stabbed a 16-year-old student. As panic spread through the building, the 18-year-old moved deeper inside before being confronted by the school principal, who managed to calm him until police arrived and arrested him.
Both victims were treated by paramedics and taken to the hospital. Neither is in a life-threatening condition, though one was more seriously injured.
Police found a backpack containing a second knife during a search of the school grounds. The national anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office has been notified of the case. Authorities confirmed that the teenager had been classed as an “S” individual — a category used to mark people considered a potential threat to national security — and was already known to police for “apology for terrorism.”
Le Figaro reported how in 2024, Ekin A. had been reported to the Grasse prosecutor by the Alpes-Maritimes departmental council after telling his psychiatrist he intended to carry out a mass killing. Prosecutor Damien Savarzeix said that police investigations confirmed he was “obsessed with mass killings and hardly tried to hide it.” He idolized far-right Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, who murdered 77 people in the 2011 Norway attacks in Oslo and Utøya, and had studied the Columbine High School massacre in the United States in 1999.
When police raided his home in April 2024, they found several bladed weapons, a bulletproof tactical vest, notebooks laying out his criminal plan, and swastikas and cabalistic symbols on his bedroom walls. They also found extensive data and internet searches about mass killings. He had been in contact with a 17-year-old girl in Cherbourg-en-Cotentin who appeared to share his fantasies; she was later arrested and placed in psychiatric care.
Ekin A. was charged with “participation in a criminal association with a view to preparing a crime” and “public apology for a crime or offense,” then transferred to compulsory psychiatric care on the orders of the prefect, who deemed him too dangerous for prison. The national anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office was alerted at the time.
Despite this, he was later released and returned to live with his family. Local police said they were stunned to learn he had been freed, saying they knew “how dangerous and determined he was.”
🚨 🇫🇷 ALERTE INFO : Ce mercredi 10 septembre, une attaque au couteau a fait au moins deux blessés au lycée horticole d'Antibes. Des élèves témoignent. (NiceMatin) pic.twitter.com/3yJSJ4JtDO
— Wolf 🐺 (@PsyGuy007) September 10, 2025On Wednesday, he walked unchallenged into his former school. Students said the gate was open and there were no security checks or alarms. One student who sheltered during the attack said in a video: “A man broke into the school with a knife… There was zero information from anyone. The gate is always open and anyone can enter. Frankly, that’s what shocked me. We heard the commotion from downstairs. There were no alerts, no messages. We only found out someone had been injured when teachers started messaging each other.”
Une attaque au couteau est survenue ce jour au Campus Vert d’Azur à #Antibes . Je condamne avec fermeté cette agression brutale qui malheureusement n’épargne aucun territoire de notre pays.
Trois personnes ont été blessées, dont une plus gravement, mais aucune n’est en urgence…
— Jean Leonetti (@JeanLeonetti) September 10, 2025Jean Leonetti, the mayor of Antibes, praised the quick thinking of staff who helped prevent a larger massacre. “I strongly condemn this brutal attack, which unfortunately spares no part of our country,” he wrote. “The perpetrator was able to be restrained thanks to the remarkable composure of the head of the establishment and the teams present.”
À Antibes, une enseignante et un élève ont été blessés, attaqués au couteau par un individu de nationalité étrangère, fiché S, et défavorablement connu des services de police pour "apologie du terrorisme". Que faisait-il encore en France ?
Tout mon soutien aux victimes et à…
— Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel) September 10, 2025National Rally’s de facto leader Marine Le Pen criticized the fact that the suspect had remained in France, writing: “In Antibes, a teacher and a student were injured, attacked with a knife by a foreign national, on the S list, and unfavorably known to the police for ‘apology for terrorism.’ What was he still doing in France?”
The suspect is now in custody, facing charges of attempted murder and armed intrusion on school grounds.
