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Barcelona school killing
Barcelona school killing
Location	Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
Date	20 April 2015 ; 9:20 – 9:40
Attack type	School shooting, school stabbing, attempted mass murder
Weapons	Crossbow; Machete; Molotov cocktails (unused);
Deaths	1
Injured	4
Motive	Psychotic break

On 20 April 2015, a 13-year-old carried out an attack at his high school, IES Joan Fuster, in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, killing one teacher and injuring four others.^[1] The student was armed with a crossbow and a machete,^[2] On arrival to school, he started shooting in a class with the crossbow, resulting in a teacher being killed and four students injured. The attack is the first and so far only school shooting in Spain.^[3]

Background

While the attack was the first documented case of a fatal school shooting in Spain, there had been a previous, unsuccessful planned school attack, when a young man in Mallorca was found to have been plotting to bomb University of the Balearic Islands with 140 kilograms of explosives.^[4] The earliest documented case of a murder on school grounds in recent Spanish history occurred in 2005, when three Dominican migrants stabbed a Colombian student to death.^[5]

Attack

The student began the attack by arriving late to class, and firing a crossbow into the face of a female teacher. The student then fired another bolt along with fatally stabbing another teacher, 36-year-old Abel Martínez Oliva, with his machete, as Martínez came to help the female teacher, trying to get her out.

Two other students were injured in the attack, including the daughter of the female teacher.

The attack ended when the school P.E. teacher, David Jurado Fernández, managed to talk the student down. According to Jurado, he found the student in the second-floor classroom with a knife, a crossbow, a backpack, and manipulating a beer bottle to make a Molotov cocktail. Jurado then told the student that he was hurting more people than he realized and asked him to show him what he had in his backpack. The student did, then collapsed in tears into Jurado's arms.^[6] Jurado then sat with the student in the classroom until the police arrived.^[7]

The attack occurred on 20 April, the anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre, which has inspired multiple murderous plots and attacks on school grounds.^[4]

Victims

One teacher was killed in the attack, and four others were injured. The teacher killed was a substitute teacher who had only recently begun working at the school. Two additional teachers and two students were also injured in the attacks. None of the injured victims were reported to have been seriously injured.^[2]

Perpetrator

The perpetrator was identified as a 13-year-old student of the same school.

After the attack, the suspect's classmates and close friends said that he "was a withdrawn boy who had academic problems". They, along with most other people, claimed a "blacklist" which included twenty people's names who he wanted to kill, was drafted by the perpetrator. Police were not able to locate said blacklist.^[8] The perpetrator's room was searched, where various weapons were found: Three toy crossbows, two air rifles, and another machete, along with a floorplan of the institute.^[8] The boy's father, who was an active weapons collector, received the crossbow years before the attack as a gift.

Aftermath

The Minister of Education said that the boy was admitted and assessed at the Sant Joan de Déu hospital, where he was diagnosed with having a psychotic break.^[9]

According to Article 19 of the Criminal Code, being a minor (18 years in Spain) "will not be criminally responsible," however, says that in case of committing a crime, he could be liable as appropriate to the law of the minor. However, since he was under 14, the young man was exempt from responsibility.^[10] While the civil responsibility would usually go to his legal guardians, in this case, since the attack occurred on school grounds, the Barcelona Education Consortium was held responsible, and had to compensate victims for a million Euros.^[11]

David Jurado, the teacher who managed to talk out the perpetrator from committing further actions, later wrote a book to be privately shared with students and victims of the attack.^[11]