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A 17-year-old Korean student will appear in the Auckland District Court on Wednesday after a teacher at Avondale College was stabbed in the back in his classroom.
The teenager is charged with wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm after being arrested in Blockhouse Bay an hour after the incident on Tuesday morning.
Police have completed the scene examination of the classroom where the attack on 49-year-old teacher David Warren is alleged to have happened in front of up to 20 other students while he was writing on the whiteboard.
Warren, the college's Japanese language teacher, was rushed to
Auckland Hospital with serious injuries.
Police swooped on the alleged offender, bundling him away, along
with another teenager.
It was so quick, even those on the street where it all happened didn't know what was going on.
"We just drove past and looked around and all the cars were there," says one man.
Inspector Cornell Kluessien of Auckland Police says a knife was used for the stabbing.
"And the stab wound was on the top of his back to the right hand side."
Less is known about the teenage attacker. ONE News understands he has only been attending Avondale College for a few weeks.
"To be honest its such an aberration and such a bizarre incident I think it's out of the ordinary. But obviously we will review everything once the incident has been fully complete," says Brent Lewis, Avondale College Principal.
Terrified students were locked down in classrooms while police combed the school grounds. They eventually found the knife in the storage compartment of a scooter which is believed to be the getaway vehicle.
Worried parents converged on the college to collect their children. One girl who was in the classroom during the attack was clearly too emotional to tell ONE News what she saw, nodding that she saw the incident happening.
"The school has arranged for counsellors to speak to them and ensure that the ones, especially in the class, are looked after. And police are speaking to those witnesses at the same time," says Kluessien.
Lewis says the first thing the college must do is give the students full information.
"The most destructive thing is to withhold information and leave them in the dark because the rumour machine will take over," he says.
Lewis says students have been asked not to speak to the media, and the college will continue as normal on Wednesday.
MPs express shock, support
Education Minister Anne Tolley phoned Lewis after the incident to offer support and the local Mt Albert MP, former prime minister Helen Clark, visited the college.
An Avondale College student, Manaola Kaumeafaiva, 14, was stabbed to death outside the college in October 2006, after a hip-hop competition organised by a church.
Petani Fa'avae, 16 at the time, was found guilty of murder and jailed for life with a minimum parole period of 11 years.
Prime Minister John Key was meeting Korean President Lee Myung-Bak in Auckland on Tuesday and says he was shocked by the stabbing.
"This is somewhat alarming ... but we need to understand whether it's an isolated incident out of left field or whether something a bit more serious is going on," he says.
"If it's an isolated incident, we will have to find out the mental state of the student involved.
"I understand he is a foreign student so we will have to look at the implications of that.
"We're literally earning billions of dollars from foreign students who are coming to study in New Zealand."
There are 32,000 law-abiding, honest and trustworthy Koreans living in this country and it is important not to tarnish the reputation of a large group of foreign students who are coming to study in New Zealand, or indeed the Korean people, because of the actions of one person, Key says.
"It is possible to get a random individual who is suffering from some sort of mental condition who undertakes an action which is totally reprehensible," he says.
"There's been issues with foreign students in the past and we've worked hard to try and improve the conditions around them and the partial care that we give those students who come to New Zealand."
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