The dad of a schoolgirl found guilty of attempted murder after she allegedly stabbed two teachers and a fellow pupil has made a shocking statement claiming his daughter was being bullied and even went on to say “her actions have some merit”.
Amman Valley school in Wales went into lockdown on April 24 last year after teachers Fiona Elias and Liz Hopkin, and a female pupil, were stabbed by the “out-of-control” girl, who was aged 13 at the time. On the morning of the attack, she smuggled her dad’s fold-up multitool knife in her trousers, and later claimed she didn’t intend to hurt anyone.
The girl, now 14, pleaded guilty to charges of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and possession of a bladed article on a school premises, but denied attempted murder, reports the Mirror. She said in a week-long trial in court she was being bullied “three or four” times a week at the Ammanford school, causing her to feel “anxious and scared all the time”.
Backing up his daughter’s claims, her father told the Times while she was “responsible for her actions […] 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 the girl had wrote disturbing entries into a notebook, including phrases like “crime of a lifetime”, wanting to do “something humans are not supposed to do”, and “why do I want to kill others as much as I want to kill myself?”
According to her father, the girl was being kicked, punched, and slapped by bullies at the school, and felt she was being unfairly “pulled up” for detention. During questioning, she admitted she hated Mrs Elias but said she did not want to kill anyone.
The court was told the girl was found with a knife in her school bag back in September 2023 by assistant head Mrs Fiona Elias and was excluded. Her father won a plea for her to be allowed back on the condition he would check her bag everyday, but the girl began carrying the multi-tool in her trousers instead.
Her father said he didn’t check her bag on the morning of the attack because the teenager had left the house before he woke up. He said he previously warned staff: “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.”
At Swansea Crown Court on Monday, the jury of seven men and five women returned a unanimous guilty verdict on all three counts following three hours of deliberation. The girl is due to be sentenced in April.
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