Judge warns of copycat attacks after sentencing teen who stabbed teacher

A judge has expressed concern over possible copycat attacks on school staff as he sentenced a teenager who stabbed a teacher in the head to four and a half years in youth detention.

Judge Thomas KC said it was the second such attack in south-west Wales in two years and that the authorities might have to consider what security measures were in place to protect teachers.

The boy, who was 15 at the time of the attack, approached the history teacher Vicki Williams when she was alone in a classroom at Milford Haven comprehensive school in Pembrokeshire, and asked her to check his work.

He shut the door of the classroom, pulled out a kitchen knife with a 20cm (8in) blade and attacked Williams. She managed to grab the knife from him and he fled.

Williams sustained a wound to her scalp, scratches on her back and minor cuts to her hands.

Christopher Rees KC, prosecuting, told Swansea crown court the attack in February had been “carefully planned” and that the boy had waited until the teacher was alone.

The boy, who is now 16 and cannot be named, was found guilty by a jury of wounding Williams with intent.

Williams told the court she thought she was going to die and expressed anger that her young daughter could have been left without a mother.

In victim personal statements she said she had been unable to return to teaching and was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. She said she always kept the doors of her home locked, had installed security cameras there and had not been able to be left alone in the weeks after the attack.

Williams said she felt guilty she had not been able to return to work and help her students and colleagues. She said she was nervous around young men and scared to go to the area where her attacker lived. “I don’t think I could be the same teacher I was before,” she said. If someone asked her for help, she feared she would “freak out”.

Thomas said the boy had not said why he attacked Williams but that it might have been that she had upset him in some way. The judge also said he was part of a group of boys “winding each other up to do stupid things to teachers”.

Thomas added: “You are much bigger and stronger than she is and you knew that.” He told the boy: “You could have killed her.”

In April 2024 a schoolgirl attempted to murder two teachers and a pupil by stabbing them with a blade at a school in Carmarthenshire, south-west Wales. She was detained for 15 years.

Thomas said: “I have concerns there may have been here or will in the future be a copycat element,” and that the authorities needed to be aware of this when considering security measures.

He told the boy: “I want anyone who is ever thinking in the future of doing the same to know what will happen to them if they do. They will spend a lot of their teenage years and perhaps beyond unable to go out with their friends, go and do what they want, go on holidays, have fun, be with their parents, follow their hobbies, and do what the rest of their friends are doing.”