Student, 14, shoots principal and teacher at a middle school in southern France

A 14 year old boy walked into his middle school in southern France on Monday morning carrying his father's hunting shotgun inside a guitar case, and opened fire on the adults who ran the school.

The shooting happened at Joseph Lakanal middle school in Aubagne, about nine miles east of Marseille, at around 10 a.m. Prosecutors said the student fired on the first floor, striking the 53 year old principal and a 37 year old teacher in the legs with pellets from a 12 gauge shotgun, then moved to the second floor and fired twice more, once into the floor in front of a teacher and once into a classroom board. A third person was grazed. At least four shots were fired in all.

Neither wound is life threatening, and no children were physically harmed. A staff member confronted the boy in a stairwell and disarmed him before police arrived, an act the deputy prosecutor praised as extreme courage. Teachers confined pupils in classrooms from the first moments, the mayor said, and a psychological support unit was sent for the students.

The Marseille prosecutor opened an investigation for attempted murder. Police sources cited by French media said the boy told investigators he felt harassed by the school and unloved. He had no prior police record, was in his final year of middle school, and was not known for delinquency or radicalization. Prosecutors said they do not yet have evidence that he targeted the two staff members specifically, and officials stressed the shooting was isolated and not connected to the high school blockade protests that have shaken France for weeks. His father was also taken into custody, according to local reporting.

Education Minister Edouard Geffray called the attack unacceptable and evidence of rising unchecked violence, and traveled to the school with the interior minister. President Emmanuel Macron praised the staff's composure and response. School shootings by pupils are rare in France; the last comparable attack was in 2017, when a 16 year old wounded three students and a principal at a high school in the south.