FRANCE: A hostage crisis ended without violence near the French city of Le Mans last night when an unemployed supply teacher freed 20 students and three adults after holding them for five hours at gunpoint.
Stéphane Bouillon, prefect of the Sarthe department, said Nicolas Villepaille (33) used a fake gun. Villepaille had earned a diploma in industrial maintenance at the Colbert de Torcy lycée in Sablé-sur-Sarthe, 220km southwest of Paris. He went on to teach in the same school, but his contract was terminated two years ago and he found no other work. Fellow teachers said he was quiet, reserved and chronically depressed.
Dominique Dezecot, an official at the prefecture, said Villepaille wanted to talk to the press about his job problems.
Villepaille entered the school around 3pm. He took a supervisor at gunpoint to a second-floor study room, where he ordered students to the back of the room. Before the crisis ended, Gregory Mercier, a student at the lycée, told France 2 TV he thought everything would be all right. "I talked to several students on the telephone," Mercier said. "They were fine. They weren't worried. They were talking and laughing. He had taken the bullets out of his pistol and was sitting on the floor. He wanted the contact with young people."
But another student said Villepaille behaved erratically, letting students talk on their telephones one minute, then suddenly ordering them to put their hands up against the window panes.
Authorities had the lycée evacuated. The gendarmerie arrived followed by 28 members of the GIGN commando force, wearing ski masks. A hot-line was set up for families of the students.
Former education minister François Fillon, also mayor of Sablé-sur-Sarthe, cut short a trip to London when Villepaille said he wanted to talk to him. But Fillon arrived after the crisis was over.
Interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who as mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine negotiated in a similar crisis in 1993, followed events closely from the French West Indies, where he is on an official visit. In 1993, police shot dead the hostage-taker.
Bouillon praised "the strength of character of the supervisors and students who never lost their sang-froid". He credited school councillor and members of the GIGN with convincing Villepaille to give up.
"He needed to talk," he said. "In these kinds of negotiations, the important thing is to get him to express what is making him suffer, and to make him realise he's doing something really stupid."
He added: "We knew about [ Villepaille's] difficulties. Unfortunately he cracked up."