As students across France were protesting in the streets this month, a 14-year-old walked into a school near Marseille, took a hunting rifle out of his guitar case, and opened fire.
“Mum, there’s a killer in the school,” one panicked schoolgirl told her mother over the phone as the gunman sprayed bullets through the hallways, wounding two teachers.
To some who knew him in the town of Aubagne, set in the mountains of Bouches-du-Rhône, the boy was a loner who was bullied; others said he was disruptive but not violent.
