A second school knife attack in two days kills a caretaker northeast of Warsaw

A 15-year-old former pupil killed a 37-year-old caretaker and injured two other members of staff at a primary school in Leszczydol-Nowiny on Thursday morning, the second knife attack at a Polish school in two days. Police said he entered the building in Wyszkow County, northeast of Warsaw, at about 9 a.m. local time, 7 a.m. GMT. The principal apprehended him. Officers were on the scene within minutes.

Police said on X that resuscitation failed and the life of the 37-year-old employee could not be saved. Interior minister Marcin Kierwinski and local officials identified her as a caretaker. Reuters, reporting from the village, said the attacker wore a helmet-mounted camera. Prime minister Donald Tusk, at an emergency meeting, said this was the first time Polish authorities were dealing with a killer who had worn a camera with the intention of filming the attack. He said he feared a grim copycat phenomenon.

The day before, and the attack that was stopped

On Wednesday a 19-year-old wounded 10 people, including himself, at a school in Ostroleka, also in the northeast. Police detained him shortly after. In a separate case on Thursday, officers in Sierpc, in north-central Poland, detained a 17-year-old on suspicion of planning an attack and found two knives in his backpack. Kierwinski announced that detention. Three cases in two days, in three towns, is the sequence Tusk put in front of the emergency meeting.

Authorities said the Leszczydol-Nowiny attack and the Ostroleka attack may be linked to an internet challenge. They have not published the name of any platform or the text of any challenge. What they have published is the custody status. The 15-year-old is in police custody. The 19-year-old is detained and was among the injured in Ostroleka. The 17-year-old in Sierpc is detained, and the knives were in the backpack rather than in a school.

People gathered beside a cordoned area and a fire vehicle at the Leszczydol-Nowiny school, Reuters photographers recorded. The village is small. A primary school there does not have the security staffing of a city lycée, and the person who stopped the attacker was the principal, not a guard. That detail is in the police account: among the injured is the principal, who apprehended the 15-year-old.

What Tusk has and has not promised

Tusk called the situation extraordinary. He did not, in the remarks Reuters carried, announce a new statute or a named package of school security measures. The operational facts from Thursday are the detention in Leszczydol-Nowiny, the detention in Sierpc, and the statement that police fear copycat attacks. The political fact is that a prime minister held an emergency meeting on the second morning of school stabbings and singled out the camera as a change in method.

Poland has had school attacks before. The new element in the official account is the clustering: Wednesday in Ostroleka, Thursday morning in Leszczydol-Nowiny, and a prevented case the same day in Sierpc. Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk, Pawel Florkiewicz and Alicja Surdy reported the Leszczydol-Nowiny attack for Reuters, with writing by Alan Charlish. The police post on X is the primary statement on the caretaker's death.

The open question is whether the three cases share a prompt beyond age and a blade. Officials have pointed to an internet challenge and have not shown the link in public. Until they do, the verified record is the times, the towns, the ages, the one death, the twelve other people hurt across the two completed attacks, and a prime minister who has said he expects more.