Nice (AFP) – A 36-year-old woman was arrested and taken into police custody on Monday after attacking the director and a teacher of a nursery school in Nice, announced prosecutor Damien Martinelli and mayor Éric Ciotti.

Published on: 02/11/2026 - 17:25

Mr. Ciotti, who visited the targeted school near the center of Nice, denounced an attack of "unbelievable violence and particularly serious" which caused "a major shock throughout the entire Nice educational community".

According to him, the director of the nursery school, who is part of a school group, "was violently attacked after being sequestered in her office for almost an hour. Another teacher was also physically attacked, she was slapped, when leaving the school, still within the school grounds".

“It is a parent of a student, a priori” who, according to him, had an appointment with the director at 9:00 a.m. "She stole the teacher's cell phone, closed the office door. She would have used a weapon," added the mayor of Nice, saying he did not know "if it was fake. I was told about the fact of a simulation of Russian roulette and also physical violence against the director," he told journalists in front of the school.

“The confinement would have lasted almost an hour and then the person would have gone out, she would have met a teacher she knew, obviously the teacher of one of her children in this nursery school, and there would have been physical violence again, several blows before the alert was given.”

No student witnessed the scene, Mr. Ciotti said.

Met in front of the school, Vanessa, mother of a child in the junior section, holds her little one by the hand: "it's scary, I would have liked to come get him sooner but no one answered the phone. It was his teacher who was attacked. A very nice person. He talks a lot, he's going to tell me this evening," she told AFP.

The Minister of National Education Edouard Geffray denounced an “intolerable” attack on X. “It comes in a context of trivialization of violence in our society, which we must collectively reject: to attack these two women in the exercise of their functions is to attack the entire School,” he underlined.

The Nice prosecutor, who did not immediately give details, was due to communicate later in the day.

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© 2026 AFP

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