Poland school stabbings: Tusk blames online violence

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said social media and video games were behind a “cult of violence” after recent school knife attacks, including a Thursday stabbing that killed a caretaker and wounded two adults northeast of Warsaw.

Tusk told a press conference that teenagers had fallen “under the influence of the internet, video games, and content that promotes pure violence”. He said the problem had “also reached Poland”.

Police said a 15-year-old former student fatally stabbed a caretaker and wounded two other adults at the John-Paul II primary school in Leszczydol-Nowiny, about 70 kilometres from Warsaw, on Thursday. Police arrested the boy after the attack.

Katarzyna Kucharska, a police spokesperson for the Warsaw region, said the caretaker was attacked first. She said a teacher and the head of the school then overpowered the attacker, although he struck them with his weapon. Regional police said the 37-year-old caretaker died of wounds.

Police also said they 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 police said a 19-year-old was arrested following a knife attack that wounded nine people at a high school in Ostroleka, about 120 kilometres north of Warsaw.