French prosecutors have opened an attempted murder investigation after a mother subject to an unenforced deportation order allegedly held a nursery school headmistress and a teacher at gunpoint, subjecting staff to physical assaults and a mock execution.
The incident occurred on the morning of November 2 at around 9am at the Clément-Roassal nursery school in central Nice.
According to regional reports in Nice-Matin and confirmation from the Nice Public Prosecutor’s Office, the 36-year-old suspect arrived requesting an urgent discussion concerning one of her two children enrolled at the establishment.
Once inside the headmistress’s office, the confrontation turned violent.
She accused staff of sexually assaulting one of her children, an unsubstantiated claim, according to prosecutor Damien Martinelli.
Judicial sources state that the woman drew a handgun, pointed the barrel directly at the head of the headmistress and pulled the trigger twice on an empty chamber in what investigators described as a simulated game of Russian roulette.
She also allegedly struck her in the face with the weapon and pulled her hair.
The assailant then reportedly produced a knife and held the blade against the headmistress’s cheek. The ordeal lasted close to an hour.
As she left the office, the suspect allegedly confronted a teacher, slapped her and pointed the firearm at her as well.
According to Mayor of Nice Éric Ciotti, no pupils witnessed the ordeal and classes were not interrupted.
Alerted by school staff after the suspect fled the premises, municipal police tracked the woman through the city’s extensive closed-circuit surveillance network.
Officers arrested her alongside her children on a nearby street, though she had changed clothes and the weapons were not found in her possession or during a search of her home.
Investigators are carrying out searches to establish whether the firearm was authentic or an imitation.
The case has reignited the debate over France’s immigration enforcement system.
Interior minister Laurent Nuñez told MPs the suspect had been “in an irregular situation” since 2019 and was under house arrest, with an obligation to report regularly to police.
According to Nice-Matin, the suspect was under an Obligation de quitter le territoire français (OQTF), a formal administrative removal order requiring her deportation, issued in 2023.
Nuñez said she had obtained asylum in Italy in 2022 and enjoyed certain protections as the parent of a French child.
Nice-Matin also reported she was listed in France’s register of people flagged for terrorism-related radicalisation (FSPRT).
French authorities issue some 140,000 OQTFs each year, yet national enforcement rates barely exceed 10 per cent due to bureaucratic inertia, judicial appeals and diplomatic refusals by home countries to grant consular travel clearances.
The rate was 10.6 per cent in the first half of 2025, according to the French Senate.
Ciotti, who also leads the Union of the Right for the Republic (UDR) party, visited the school and denounced the attack. He said it was “of unprecedented violence, particularly serious” and caused “a major shock in the entire Nice educational community”.
France’s education minister Édouard Geffray said on X he would go to the nursery at the end of the week to personally express his support.
He called the attack “intolerable” and said it happened in a context of the normalisation of violence in French society.
Both staff members have been granted the State’s legal protection for public servants.
National Rally (RN) leader Jordan Bardella denounced the country’s ensauvagement — descent into savagery — and said the suspect “should not be on our soil”.
The suspect, who has two previous convictions, including one for armed violence, remains in police custody. She denies the allegations.
