A 13-year-old French boy set out Tuesday to mow down his teachers with a shotgun but abandoned the plan when he arrived at the school and found it surrounded by police, officials said.
The boy's parents raised the alarm when they realised he had taken the family gun from their house near Beauvais, north of Paris, and was headed to his school in Beauvais itself, officials said.
The teenager was in custody on suspicion of attempted murder and admitted his homicidal intentions during an interview, Beauvais prosecutor James Juan said in a statement.
He wanted "to attack his teachers who quarrelled with him even though he had done nothing (wrong)," Juan said. The boy, said to be a video game enthusiast, had on Monday left a message on his blog stating that "this is the last day of my life."
Police warned the head of the 2,000-pupil Saint Esprit school to keep his students confined to their classrooms as the drama unfolded. Yeddou stressed that the boy never managed to get into the school and students were not in danger at any point.
The alarm was raised at 8:15 am (0715 GMT) by the boy's parents, who had become concerned by his unusual behaviour and searched their house, finding the gun and ammunition gone. "His parents were worried when they saw him leave the house very early, around 7:00 am. He did not seem to be his usual self," a source close to the investigation said.
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