Girl who stabbed teachers and pupil carried knives from age of seven, jury hears

A girl who stabbed two teachers and a fellow pupil in a playground has told a jury that she had taken knives into school since she was seven or eight.

The girl, who was 13 at the time of the attacks, said she carried blades every day because she used them to self-harm and she was frightened of being bullied and didn’t trust the system to protect her.

She told Swansea crown court that the memory of the assaults was a blur but repeatedly insisted she did not intend to kill the three victims.

Asked what the attacks felt like now, she said: “It doesn’t feel like I did it.” She felt “terrible, guilty”, adding: “I would do anything to go back.”

The girl, now 14, has admitted wounding the two teachers and pupil at Ysgol Dyffryn Aman in Ammanford, Carmarthenshire, but denies attempted murder.

She told the court she was unhappy at school and was physically and verbally abused. She felt worried, scared and unsafe “24/7”. The girl said: “I used to harm myself and bring a knife to school.”

Asked by her barrister, Caroline Rees KC, how old she had been when she first began taking knives into school, she said she was in year 3 or 4 of primary school.

The girl said that in September 2023 she was excluded from school for about a week after a kitchen knife was found in her bag. Her father began checking her bag but she would take a blade in her pocket every day.

On the day of the attack in April, the girl said she took a multi-tool with a blade that her father used for fishing into school. She said she was feeling grumpy and irritable and got angry when the assistant headteacher Fiona Elias told her she was not allowed into a school hall at break time.

“I was very, very angry,” the girl said. She said she had told her friends she was going to “slap” or “beat up” Elias, which could lead to her being expelled. She said this had been a “petty threat” and had not planned to use the blade.

The defendant remembered talking to Elias in the playground but does not recall striking her or the second teacher, Liz Hopkin. She said: “I remember the start of it. The end of it was kind of a blur … I remember saying to myself: ‘What am I doing? Stop.’ I remember being very hot. I remember feeling exhausted and panicked and scared.”

The girl said that during the attack a friend told her: “Think of your family.” She said: “I tried to breathe slowly but it didn’t work.”

Asked by Rees if she was in control of herself, the girl replied: “No.” She said she remembered catching sight of a girl who had allegedly bullied her. The defendant said: “I turned around and screamed, ‘You’re next.’”

After she stabbed the girl, her victim told her: “You’re a fucking psychopath.” The defendant said she replied to the girl: “It’s your fault.”

The 14-year-old said she accepted she did not like Elias but insisted she did not want to see her or the other two to come to harm. “I’ve never wished for anyone to be dead,” she said.

After the attacks, the girl said she felt “empty and relieved”. She said: “I felt I didn’t have anything on my mind any more.”

The prosecutor William Hughes KC asked the defendant about notes she had written in which she said she wanted to do something “humans aren’t supposed to do” and referred to committing the “crime of a lifetime”. She had also drawn a picture of the schoolgirl she stabbed and written that she “will burn”. The defendant insisted she had not really planned to hurt anyone.

Asked by Hughes why she had kept taking knives to school, she said: “I didn’t trust the system, the people.”

The defendant said she had been joking when she said after the stabbing: “That’s one way to be a celebrity”. She added that she had not found what had happened funny but explained: “It was supposed to be some sort of joke.”

The trial continues.