A 16-year-old pupil has been found not guilty of attempted murder after stabbing his teacher in the head with a kitchen knife at Milford Haven Comprehensive School in Pembrokeshire. He was, however, convicted of wounding with intent and unlawful wounding following the attack on history teacher Vicki Williams on 5 February.
Williams told Swansea Crown Court she feared she would die after the boy followed her into an empty classroom, pulled a knife from his bag and lunged at her. She suffered injuries to her head, back and hands, and the school was locked down after the incident.
What happened in the classroom?
The boy, who was 15 at the time and cannot be named because of his age, had asked Williams for help with his history work at the end of the school day. She told a jury he came into her classroom “cool and collected” and asked whether his “work was correct”.
Williams said that “got [her] confused” because he had “never seemed bothered before”. It was when he shut the door to the classroom, saying it was cold, that “alarm bells” began to ring in her head.
She said he was trying to “keep her talking” while he was “trying to find something in his bag”. She told the court:
“I ask him again, ‘are you sure you’re alright?’ And then he pulls [the knife] out of the bag and lunges at me.”
During the attack, Williams grabbed the knife, pushed the boy back with her legs and screamed. A colleague rushed to help and described her screams as “gut-wrenching”. Williams said the look on the teenager’s face was one of “pure hatred”.
She told the court she believed she was about to die, saying:
“I’m fearful that I am dying, I’ve seen the knife, I know I’ve been stabbed, all I’m thinking at that point is, ‘I need help’.”
Williams said the attack “came out of nowhere”.
How did the school and police respond?
Milford Haven Comprehensive School was locked down after the incident, and CCTV footage showed the teenager running away from the school afterwards. He was later arrested at his grandmother’s house after telling her that “something went” his head.
His grandmother told the jury:
“He was crying,”
“he had his head hung low in his hands.”
What did the pupil tell the court?
The boy told the jury he had brought the knife to school as a “game” with his friends. He said the game involved bringing “random household objects” to see what they could “get away with”.
When asked why he had chosen the largest knife from the knife block at his home, he said he wanted “the most impressive one to show his friends”. Asked by his defence barrister if he wanted teachers to discover it, he said “no” and denied wanting to use it in a violent way or to deliberately injure Williams.
The boy also denied there being any bad feeling between him and his history teacher. In court, school staff and his grandmother described him as a “quiet boy”.
He told the court Williams had seen him with the knife and “tried to grab it” from him, adding that he had “accidentally assaulted her” during the struggle.
What was the verdict?
On Monday, the jury found the 16-year-old not guilty of attempted murder but guilty of wounding with intent and unlawful wounding. The case centred on whether the stabbing was a deliberate attempt to kill or the result of a struggle after Williams tried to take the knife from him.
