Teacher Sets Herself on Fire in Front of Students
Woman’s self-immolation follows confrontation with rowdy pupils in southern France.
| Posted Friday, Oct. 14, 2011, at 5:08 PM ET
Photo by Boris Horvat/AFP/Getty Images.
A 44-year-old math teacher who set herself on fire in front of students at her school in southern France died Friday.
The AFP reports that the self-immolation appears to have been prompted by a confrontation between the teacher and a group of rowdy students at a Thursday meeting aimed at clearing the air between the instructor and her pupils.
Students and teachers who witnessed the apparently depressed teacher douse herself in gasoline and set herself ablaze quickly came to her aid. She was then airlifted from the Beziers school to a Montpellier hospital, where she was treated for third-degree burns on Thursday before passing away the following day.
The BBC has this account:
She came to the Jean Moulin school on Thursday morning with a jerry can, gave a class at 09:00 and then, when the morning break came, walked to the centre of the playground, poured petrol on herself and set herself alight.
"I saw her body on fire, walking forward with her hands on her head," said one student witness, Karim.
"Several people tried to put her out. She said 'No, leave me alone. I don't need help. God told me to do this.'"
The Connexion, an English-Language paper based in France, has a summary of the story from the French press, and reports that Education Minster Luc Chatel visited the teacher in the hospital prior to her death and described her as "psychologically very fragile." He said an inquiry will be held to find out the precise cause of her actions.
