The girl, who was 13 at the time, was found guilty of three counts of attempted murder after attacking deputy head teacher Fiona Elias, teacher Liz Hopkin, and a female pupil at Ysgol Dyffryn Aman
A teenager who stabbed two teachers and a classmate at a school in Wales had “reached breaking point” after being bullied, her dad has claimed.
The girl, who was 13 at the time and cannot be named for legal reasons, was found guilty of three counts of attempted murder after attacking deputy head teacher Fiona Elias, teacher Liz Hopkin, and a female pupil on April 24 last year. The teen had used her dad’s multi-tool knife to attack the victims during a morning break at Ysgol Dyffryn Aman.
During the week-long trial the girl, now 14, took to the witness box and said she would be bullied “three or four” times a week in the Ammanford school and as a result felt “anxious and scared all the time”.
Now, in an interview with The Times, her dad has claimed that bullying caused her daughter to reach breaking point. He said while his daughter was “responsible for her actions” he added: “Unfortunately her actions have some merit.” He said: “When you have somebody of authority who is pushing down on you and they are not listening and you are getting constantly bullied everyone is going to have a breaking point and she got to her breaking point I believe.
“At home, prior to it all happening, I could see she was getting depressed and she was self-harming. This was a sign. She contemplated suicide for a little bit because the bullying was extreme but instead of going that way about it she went the other way and lashed out.”
During the trial the court heard that the teachers thought they were going to die during the attacks. The jury were also told that she wrote disturbing entries in a notebook including ‘Why do I want to kill others as much as I want to kill myself.”
WalesOnline reported, the girl’s father claimed that the girl was being kicked, punched, and slapped by bullies at the Carmarthenshire school and felt she was being unfairly “pulled up” for detention. While being cross-examined the girl admitted that she hated Mrs Elias but said she did not want to kill anyone.
The court was told the girl had been excluded from school at the start of the academic year after a knife was found in her bag. She was allowed to return to school on the condition that her father agreed to check her bag every morning before she left, as well as permission for school staff to check her bag.
Her father told The Times that he didn’t check her bag that morning because his daughter had left the house before he woke up. He said he previously warned staff that “if you don’t stop the bullying something is going to go bad”. He alleged: “They completely ignored it and brushed it off by the looks of it.”
On Monday a jury returned a guilty verdict on three counts of attempted murder after three hours of deliberation. She pleaded guilty to charges of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and possession of a bladed article on a school premises. The girl is due to be sentenced in April.
