Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, May 16, 1993                   TAG: 9305160117
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: NEUILLY-SUR-SEINE, FRANCE                                LENGTH: Medium

TEACHER LAUDED AFTER HOSTAGE RESCUE

The teacher, Laurence Dreyfus, refused to leave her nursery school class during 46 tense hours of being held hostage by a man with dynamite strapped to his waist.

Dreyfus, the mother of a 20-month-old child, told the children that the armed stranger in their classroom was there to repair the heating system.

With calm professionalism that won flowing praise from national leaders, Dreyfus supervised the children in games and art projects and led them in song to distract them from the life-and-death drama taking place around them.

The man with the dynamite, who described himself in papers found at the scene as the "Human Bomb," was identified as Eric Schmitt, 42, an Algerian-born Frenchman who ran a computer company that went bankrupt two years ago.

Schmitt was shot four times in the head by an elite French police unit that entered the classroom on the orders of Interior Minister Charles Pasqua. The police action, staged just after dawn Saturday, was described as a last-ditch effort to save the six children, all girls ages 4 and 5, who remained hostage inside the Commandant Charcot school in this affluent Paris suburb.

Officials already had provided the $18.5 million Schmidt had demanded as ransom for the children. But Pasqua said police specialists in hostage situations became worried when Schmidt lost interest in the money and began to appear suicidal.

Moving into the classroom while Schmitt was sleeping, policemen assigned to the special RAID unit covered the children with mattresses and then shot Schmidt with silencer-equipped weapons when he awoke and appeared threatening.

"The peril was immense," said Pasqua. "At certain times he showed signs of wishing to commit suicide. We were afraid that he would kill himself in the classroom."

Pasqua said police found 4.4 pounds of dynamite, including 16 sticks strapped to Schmidt's waist, in the room.

The dynamite was wired to a detonator in Schmitt's hand.

Schmitt had bombed an underground parking garage in Neuilly on May 8 and left notes signed with the initials "H.B." - for the English words "Human Bomb."

Keywords:
FATALITY