‘It haunts me:’ Principal recalls man crashing into school, threatening students
SAINTE-ANNE-DE-KENT, N.B. — It’s lunchtime at an elementary school in the bucolic village of Sainte-Anne-de-Kent. The children squeal with delight as they play tag and hopscotch on the playground.
But the enchantment of the warm fall day last September is broken when a man driving erratically arrives at the school threatening to kill the principal and students.
The children are quickly corralled into classrooms where they remain under lockdown for 45 terrifying minutes: The youngest play hide and seek under their teacher’s desk, older students pray and ask if they are going to die, and a petrified principal in a locked basement fears the worst.
On Thursday, 36-year-old Mathieu Carroll will be sentenced in a Moncton courtroom for ramming his car into the front entrance of École Calixte-F.-Savoie, an incident parents and teachers say shattered the innocence of many children at the rural school in eastern New Brunswick.