Armed teacher takes 20 hostage in French school
09/03/2006 16h21LE MANS, France (AFP) - An unemployed teacher took 18 students, a teacher and another man hostage at gunpoint at a high school in western France.
The drama was unfolding in the Colbert de Torcy state school in the town of Sable-sur-Sarthe, southwest of Le Mans.
Officials said the hostage-taker, a 33-year-old contract supply teacher without work, had taught at the school two years ago.
They said he was armed with a pistol.
"Police are currently at the scene and are negotiating with the hostage-taker through a door which has been barricaded," the director of the regional government administrator's office told AFP.
He was "probably going through a crisis of depression," the director said.
The school, which has around 1,600 students enrolled, also contains a vocational training section.
Well he's in the right place for a fast getaway.
This guy has no class.
LE MANS, France - A former teacher armed with a handgun and reportedly suffering from depression took 23 hostages Thursday, most of them students, in a high school classroom before surrendering, police said.
The 33-year-old one-time teacher turned himself in, after holding the hostages captive throughout the afternoon and early evening, police and local officials said. Details of the surrender were not immediately available