Dad of school girl who stabbed two teachers and pupil made fatal error day of attack
Dad of school girl who stabbed two teachers and pupil made fatal error day of attack
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A teenage school girl convicted on three counts of attempted murder had reached "breaking point", according to her father. The pupil was just 13 when she used a multi-tool to attack two teachers and a fellow student during a mid-morning break at the Ysgol Dyffryn Aman secondary school in Ammanford, Carmarthenshire. Now the girl's dad has defended her, even going so far as to say that his daughter's actions "have some merit", citing bullying as a possible reason for the attacks.
Before the attempted murders, the girl had been excluded for a week at the start of the academic year when assistant head teacher Fiona Elias found a knife in her bag. Her return was agreed, provided her father checked her bag every morning, with school staff allowed to search it too. But on April 24, the pupil left the house before her father woke up, meaning he did not check her bag. This was a fatal error which left Elias, 48, special needs co-ordinator Liz Hopkin, 53 and a female year 10 pupil vulnerable to attack.
The dad told The Times he had already warned the school: "If you don't stop the bullying, something is going to go bad". He alleged: "They completely ignored it and brushed it off, by the looks of it.". "When you have somebody of authority who is pushing down on you and they are not listening and you are getting constantly bullied, everyone is going to have a breaking point and she got to her breaking point, I believe," he added.
"At home, prior to it all happening, I could see she was getting depressed and she was self-harming. This was a sign. She contemplated suicide for a little bit because the bullying was extreme, but instead of going that way about it she went the other way and lashed out.". According to the parent, the girl had been punched, kicked and slapped by bullies at school. At her trial at Swansea Crown Court, the jury heard a fellow pupil had seen the girl be slapped on the back of the head four or five times by the pupil she would later attack.
In the witness box in court, the girl said she had taken knives to school since she was in year 3 or 4 - from the age of 7 or 8 - due to feeling "scared and worried". On the day of the attack, she asked the assistant head why she couldn't go into the school's lower hall during break times, with the teacher telling the court she had a "sinister" look in her eye. She was also spoken to about wearing cargo trousers, which wasn't school uniform.
"I explained why she couldn't go there and she said: 'I don't want an explanation, I just want to go in there'," the assistant head reportedly told the court. "She was playing with something in her pocket … she said: 'Do you want to see what is in my pocket?' and pulled something out and I saw the knife. Then she said: 'I am going to kill you, I am going to f***ing kill you' and then she started to stab me and instinct kicked in and we tried to stop her.".
The 13-year-old went onto stab special needs co-ordinator Liz repeatedly before running off with the knife to find the pupil she subsequently attacked. She left Fiona with 2cm stab wounds to her leg, chest and shoulders and Liz with stab wounds to her hand and arm, while the pupil was stabbed in the torso and legs. None of the injuries were life threatening. The attacker, who is now 14, was restrained by teachers and later arrested. She was convicted of three counts of attempted murder on Monday, after a week long trial. A notebook in her room talked of killing other people - she referred to "burning a person"... "to death", saying "I feel like I'm going to commit a crime of a lifetime".
