Attack with knife at the Ariosto high school in Ferrara: student injured, attacker arrested

More weapons and violence in Italian schools. This time the scene of the attack was the Ariosto high school in Ferrara during what seemed like a normal school morning. Around 10.15 a second class student, who had gone to the institute's bathrooms, was first pushed and then attacked by an unknown boy with a fifteen centimeter long diving knife.

Only the young man's reflexes avoided fatal consequences with the blow which, deflected, ended up hitting his hands and arms, causing only superficial wounds. The alleged attacker, an unemployed young adult from the province, was stopped and arrested by the police almost in flagrante delicto in the early afternoon. The testimonies collected, the collaboration of the suspect's family and the finding during the search of the young man of a sheath deemed perfectly compatible with the weapon used in the attack, seized in the morning at the high school, were decisive for the Carabinieri's investigations. The boy was then arrested almost in flagrante delicto.

Taken to the Provincial Headquarters of the Carabinieri in Ferrara, he was questioned by the prosecutor on duty. At the end of the preliminary investigation, as ordered by the judicial authority, he was subjected to arrest at a health facility, awaiting the subsequent validation hearing. The 15-year-old victim tried to defend himself from the attacker and chased him away. He was injured in this scuffle, fortunately suffering only minor injuries. Taken to the emergency room at the Sant'Anna hospital in Cona (Ferrara), he underwent medical tests and was immediately discharged.

The investigations by the Carabinieri, coordinated by the Public Prosecutor's Office of Ferrara, made it possible to exclude any relationship of acquaintance between the victim and the suspect. The investigations continue, however, to acquire further useful elements to fully clarify the contours and reasons of the affair. All investigative leads remain open: from the crazy gesture to mistaken identity, up to a stabbing inspired by online groups. That same network that in recent days had come under the magnifying glass of investigators following other stabbings perpetrated by very young people against their teachers in Rome and Lamezia Terme.

In the meantime, the shock was also great for the many Ferrara parents, whose children attend the high school every day in which an attack even comparable to what happened this morning had never occurred. The school has not released any statements but, with a provision from the head teacher Domenico Marcello Urbinati, has introduced more stringent procedures regarding the places where students enter the institute, also strengthening the supervision of school collaborators.