‘Out of a horror movie’: Brave teacher who restrained teenage attacker recounts school stabbing
Former assistant head teacher Darrel Campbell restrained the teenage school girl who was on Monday sentenced for the attempted murder of two teachers and a pupil at Amman Valley School, Alex Ross looks back at the shocking incident
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Once at the forefront of the south-west Wales’ decimated mining industry, Ammanford is a small and fairly unremarkable Welsh market town nestled at the foot of the towering Black Mountains.
But in April last year, the town was flung into the national spotlight after a teenage girl pulled out a knife and started attacking two teachers and another pupil during morning breaktime at Amman Valley School.
On Monday, the now 14-year-old girl was detained for 15 years after being found guilty of their attempted murder at Swansea Crown Court. It was an incident that shocked the nation and raised fears over the safety of children and teachers in schools.
Speaking to the BBC, a former assistant head teacher who restrained the girl during the attack at the 1,800-pupil school likened the event to "something out of a horror movie"
Darrel Campbell took hold of the girl while she still had a knife in her hand. He said: "I've had countless sleepless nights. The incident is like it happened yesterday. As soon as I saw the knife, I was just focused on the girl. She said she was going to kill [the pupil].
"I ran after her. I grabbed her right hand which held the knife, I put her into a headlock and dragged her back. Everything else is a blur."
It was just after 11.15am, when a public address system at the school announced a “Code Red” alert, with children placed into lockdown as sirens from arriving emergency vehicles flickered outside.
Seeing that something serious had happened, some students, instead of returning to their classrooms, chose to vault the school fence to escape.
Dozens of parents turned up outside the school gates, desperate for news as rumours spread quickly that a teenage pupil had gone on the rampage with a knife inside the school.
It wasn’t until 3pm when the parents were reunited with their children and details began to emerge of what happened inside the school.
The attacker, who was 13 at the time cannot be named for legal reasons, pulled out a knife from her pocket after being questioned over her uniform by teacher Fiona Elias while outside a school hall.
“I am going to kill you, I am going to f****** kill you,” the girl said as she stabbed Ms Elias.
Another teacher, Liz Hopkin, stepped in but was also stabbed, suffering serious injuries to her back, neck, legs and arms.
Two male staff members arrived, but the girl managed to push past them and attack another schoolgirl, before Mr Campbell restrained her in a neck hold to end the violence.
At Swansea Crown Court, where the girl was found guilty of the attempted murder of the two teachers and school girl, a jury heard how both attacked teachers thought they were going to die.
“I thought she was going to kill me – she went for my neck and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop her,” said Ms Hopkin.
At the time of the attack, Mair Wyn, who has been a governor at Amman Valley School for 34 years, said: “It is a complete shock for the community. “It’s an excellent school, the pupils are such lovely children and I can’t understand why this issue has happened, it’s unbelievable really.”
The trial heard how the girl had been previously caught with a knife in her backpack during a search in school toilets a year before the attack.
Mrs Elias said she was excluded before being allowed back in school on the condition regular bag checks were done on her. “We didn’t do a lot, she settled back in really,” the teacher said.
“More should have been done,” a parent not wanting to be named told The Independent.
The attack comes amid rising fears over knife crime, particularly inside schools.
Mr Campbell told the BBC: "I'd like to think it was an isolated incident, I'd like to think it would never happen again in any school in Wales. But schools are a reflection of society, and it is something that the authorities, the Senedd, have to look at."
An investigation by The Independent last year revealed four attacks were happening on children or teachers each week, with rural police force areas such as Lancashire and West Mercia among the worst for the number of incidents.
Anne Longfield, former children’s commissioner for England, warned that knives and knife attacks were an “urgent crisis”, while calling on the Labour government to drive intervention through community-based pilot schemes.
She told The Independent: “Hardly a week passes without seeing the horrific consequences of serious violence and knife crime. It can happen anywhere, including, as this terrifying case shows, in schools.
"This is an urgent crisis. There can be a chilling sense of inevitability for many of the most vulnerable children, that they can fall through the gaps and become at risk of involvement in violence or exploitation.
“We need to be much quicker to support the most vulnerable children and their families, through schools, youth work, and mental health support as early as possible.
Latest Home Office figures show there were 50,500 offences involving a sharp instrument in England and Wales in the year ending March 2024, up 4 per cent from the year before.
Separate Ministry of Justice figures show that in the year ending March 2023, 17 per cent of people cautioned and convicted for possession of a knife or weapon were aged 10 to 17.
Policing minister Dame Diana Johnson told The Independent: “The evidence shows too many young people are still getting these weapons online, so we are introducing stronger age verification checks and significant fines for tech executives who fail to swiftly remove knife crime content on their sites.”
Back in Ammanford, life continues for students and parents at Amman Valley which boasts Welsh rugby stars Shane Williams and Hannah Jones as among its former pupils.
Local Senedd member Adam Price, who is a former pupil at the school, told The Independent: “What we need is a full national inquiry into school safety in schools - this was a disturbing incident, and the consequences could have been worse.
“We need to realise that this could happen anywhere.”