Initial investigations by carabinieri police who arrived on the scene suggest the assailant attacked 52-year-old teacher Elisabetta Condò from behind while she was passing through the rows of desks, before threatening his classmates with a replica gun.
Police subsequently found the student sitting on his own with his head between his hands.
He did not resist being arrested.
“I wanted to express my solidarity and that of the entire government with the attacked teacher, who did her duty in an exemplary way towards a boy who had already had some problems in the past,” Valditara said.
“I want us to take the opportunity to reflect on the introduction of psychologists at school.
“It is a particularly difficult time, the uneasiness experienced by young people, also as a result of Covid, has greatly increased,” added the minister.
He described the incident at the Alessandrini institute as “particularly disturbing”.
A student eyewitness to the attack described the incident as a ‘scene out of America’.
“When I realised that we were evacuating and one of our classmates was thought to be armed with a gun, I thought, ‘so it happens here too, not just in America,” the student representative at the school said.
Another eyewitness said the assailant “hit the teacher from behind, in the shoulder, in the arm, without screaming, without saying anything”.
“He was not agitated, he seemed to have no emotions.
“Then I saw him raise a gun as the teacher was being escorted out of the room, and I immediately ran away along with everyone else,” the classmate said.
The 16-year-old student assailant has been admitted to the adolescent neuropsychiatry department of San Paolo hospital in the Lombardy regional capital, sources said.
The boy was initially taken to San Carlo for checks.
“There was never any warning of the possibility of such behaviour, we certainly could not have imagined such a thing as this,” headteacher Michele Raffaeli said, adding that the school had already scheduled a meeting with the student and his parents for Tuesday in relation to learning difficulties.
ANSA
