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Girl who stabbed teacher always had knife at school

BBC Teacher Liz Hopkin on the left. She has a blonde bob haircut, glasses and a dark jumper and is smiling. Fiona Elias, with blonde hair, on the right is also smilingBBC
Teachers Liz Hopkin (left) and Fiona Elias (right) were injured at the school on 24 April

A 14-year-old girl who stabbed two teachers and a pupil said she had taken a knife to school every day since primary school, a court has heard.

Teachers Fiona Elias and Liz Hopkin, as well as a pupil at Ysgol Dyffryn Aman in Ammanford, Carmarthenshire, were taken to hospital after being stabbed on 24 April.

The girl, who cannot be named due to her age, has admitted the triple stabbing but denies attempted murder.

Giving evidence at Swansea Crown Court, she said she was "scared and worried" in school so had taken "blades" or multi-tools in with her since Year 3 or 4.

The girl, who was 13 at the time, told the court she felt "terrible" about what happened and would "do anything to go back".

"It doesn't feel like I did it, to be honest. [I feel] terrible, guilty," she told Caroline Rees KC, defending.

She added that she did not intend to kill any of the people who were injured and could not remember large parts of the incident.

Footage shows the moment a 14-year-old pupils stabs a teacher at a south Wales school

She confirmed Ms Elias found a knife in her bag in September 2023 because she "forgot it was there" and was suspended for five days.

Her dad subsequently checked her bag daily so she would take knives to school in her pocket, she said.

The girl denied saying she wanted to kill Ms Elias before the attacks.

"I would say stuff like ‘I want to punch her, or slap her. I never wished by anyone to be dead," she told the court.

The teenager said she did not know Ms Hopkin, but had drawn and written about the pupil who was stabbed.

She said that followed an incident that made her "angry" a week or two before the attacks, but she told the jury she did not want to physically hurt the pupil.

She said she put the multitool in her pocket "as usual" on 24 April and would keep it under her bed or in her clothes so it would be "less suspicious".

Crown Prosecution Service Image of the knife used in the attack, silver, with a folding hingeCrown Prosecution Service
In CCTV footage shown to the court , the girl could be seen sitting around a table with a group of pupils and showing them the above knife

She said nobody checked her bag that day and she was on her period, causing her to feel "upset or grumpy".

She said before the stabbings she carved her name into the floor in the lower school hall, an area she was not allowed to be in.

She also told the court she had self harmed in the past.

Prosecution barrister William Hughes KC then asked the teenager about drawings and phrases found in her notebooks.

When asked what she meant by the words "I want to do something humans are supposed to", she said: "Initially I was planning on killing myself."

She was then asked what she meant by "why do I want to kill other as much as I want to kill myself?"

She replied: "I meant it in more of a psychological term. I feel like I’m hurting others just by existing."

She was also asked about the phrase "I feel like I’m going to commit a crime of a lifetime" and said that she was religious and, if she was going to kill herself, then it would be a crime.

Drawings and phrases like "burning", "drowning" and "death", which referred to the pupil she stabbed, were an "expression" of how she felt, she told the jury.

When asked by Mr Hughes why she continued to take a knife to school she said she "didn’t trust the system, the people".

She told the court she did not take the knife to school on 24 April in order to use it on the teachers or the pupil.

The trial continues.