A Thirteen-Year-Old Kills a Teacher at a Slovak Primary School
An eighth-grade pupil stabbed a 61-year-old teacher to death at the school in Staškov, near the Czech border, on Tuesday morning, seriously wounding a second teacher and a schoolgirl. Organised crime investigators are treating it as premeditated murder. The boy was arrested and is in a critical condition. “Such events serve as a serious warning to our entire society,” said President Peter Pellegrini.
The president’s second remark is the more troubling one, because it points at a pattern rather than an aberration: he said he was “shocked that this is yet another case in which a student attacked teachers and a classmate”. His prescription was social rather than legal. “It is all the more important that we pay close attention to the atmosphere we create in society,” he said. “We need more calm, respect, and mutual regard.” The prime minister Robert Fico offered condolences and said he was following events with great concern. Staškov is a village of about 2,750 people in the Čadca district. The surviving teacher is in her forties, though accounts of her exact age differ. Watch whether Slovakia revisits how it screens for risk in schools.