WARSAW: A 15-year-old fatally stabbed the caretaker at his former school in Poland and wounded two other adults on Thursday, a day after a similar knife attack wounded nine in a Polish high school, police said.

Police arrested the boy after the attack at the John-Paul II primary school in Leszczydol-Nowiny, a small town 70 kilometres northeast of Warsaw, a police spokesperson said. “The caretaker was the first person assaulted by the former student,” said Katarzyna Kucharska, spokesperson for the police in the Warsaw region.

“Then a teacher and the head of the school managed to overpower him, even though he struck them with his weapon.” The caretaker, 37, died of her wounds, regional police said on X. Police said they had also detained a 17-year-old boy in another Polish town after he made it known that he intended to do “something spectacular” at his school. Officers found a bag containing two knives in his apartment.

Thursday’s attack came a day after a 19-year-old was arrested after nine people were wounded at a high school in Ostroleka, 120 kilometres north of Warsaw. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told a Warsaw press conference that a “cult of violence” spread by social media and video games was behind the knife attacks.

Teenagers have fallen “under the influence of the internet, video games, and content that promotes pure violence”, Tusk said. “Unfortunately, it has also reached Poland.”

Published in Dawn, October 9th, 2026