Rabat – An armed teacher has killed three people near Azrou, a town 89 kilometers south of Fez in the Ifrane Province of the Fez-Meknes region, Morocco.
The inhabitants of Douar Ait Ouali, in the region of Azrou, were shocked when a retired teacher killed three members of his wife’s family and injured four others, including a gendarme, with a hunting rifle Sunday night.
Moroccan news outlet Al Yaoum 24 said that the crime resulted from a conflict between the teacher and three members of his wife’s family.
Before gendarmes arrived, the man shot his three relatives.
The suspect then injured four other people, including a gendarme.
The injured victims were transferred to the Azrou Regional Hospital to receive care.
Some witnesses told Al Yaoum 24 that the suspect suffers mental disorders.
Khaled Hasi, a brother of one of the victims, told Al Yaoum 24 that the suspect had frequently visited the family, as the suspect’s wife left him after he retired.
The victim’s brother added that the suspect has been suffering mental disorders since his retirement.
One of the victims who survived the shooting and a sister of Badr, one of the murdered victims, told Moroccan news outlet Hespress that the suspect was “following her with his bullets as he was hunting pigs.”
“I was running throughout the neighborhood and knocking on houses. No one could open a door for me because everyone was hiding; everyone was scared,” she said.
The victim said she finally found a place to hide while the suspect was smoking and waiting for her to appear.
A man from the same douar took her in his motorcycle and ran away while he was following them with his hunting rifle.
The victim said that, in addition to her sister, she lost her husband during the incident, and called on King Mohammed VI to intervene and call for authorities to give the suspect the maximum penalty.
The prepatator, according to Khaled Hasi, had started a fight with a group of young people near his in-laws’ house. The fight became a heated debate, which resulted in the intervention of the Royal Gendarmerie.
The suspect then started shooting deliberately, taking the lives of three people while four others were wounded.
Several Moroccan news outlets reported on the crime, including Moroccan TV channel 2M. 2M, however, reported that only two people were injured.
