Students barricaded themselves in classrooms before being evacuated when a 19-year-old attacked pupils, teachers and bystanders with a knife at Zespół Szkół Zawodowych nr 4 in Ostrołęka at around 09:00 GMT on 7 October 2026. Nine people were wounded, including five pupils and two teachers.
The attacker had a homemade explosive device in his backpack. Before the assault, he wrote to a friend: 'Today is my birthday. I have plans for the day. People will be talking about it.'
The next day, at around 09:00 GMT, a 15-year-old former pupil entered a primary school in Leszczydół-Nowiny, north of Warsaw, and attacked three school employees. He was wearing a helmet fitted with a camera and appeared to have been intending to film the knife attack, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said.
Daria, 37, the school caretaker, had been speaking to a parent about the approaching Teachers' Day when she was stabbed. She died despite resuscitation efforts, leaving a husband and two young children.
The school director, Krzysztof Ochmański, subdued the teenager after he ran towards him. Ochmański said: 'When I pushed him away, he seemed to have been disconnected from something through that effort, because he said something to me that he no longer wanted to do this.'
The two attacks left one school janitor dead and 11 people injured across the Mazovia region.
By Friday, 9 October, unverified online reports were claiming that the day would bring a peak in school knife attacks. Many parents kept their children at home, and the reports prompted concern across Mazovia.
Schools and kindergartens in Mazovia were placed under extra police monitoring from 9 October, with municipal guards supporting the operation. By 6 am on Saturday, 10 October, police had checked nearly 50,000 educational facilities across Poland, recorded 231 incidents and detained 76 people.
Police also detained a 17-year-old in Sierpc after he said on school grounds that he planned to do something dangerous. Teachers alerted officers, who found two knives in his possession. Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński said the teenager had been searching for information on how to orchestrate a 'bloody' event of this kind.
Tusk said at an emergency meeting on Thursday that he feared a 'grim copycat phenomenon'. He ordered police to visit schools daily in an effort to prevent further violence.
Polish Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz said on Friday, 9 October, that Russia was seeking to exploit the two attacks through a coordinated disinformation campaign intended to stoke public panic. He did not identify the alleged Russian actors or describe the means by which the material had spread.
Authorities found no foreign involvement in either attack. Services also found no evidence that the events resulted from an online challenge. Krzysztof Gawkowski, the minister of digital affairs, said: 'There is currently no threat that would indicate there is a nationwide action that has united some group of people.'
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