He found his wife on the school steps, blood coming out of her neck - how could a child do this?

If you knew Liz, you wouldn't be surprised that she was still trying to calm other people down around her and she was in a panic because she was worried about other pupils and felt she should have held on to the girl for longer

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managed to slowly calm the girl down enough to put a stop to the incident.

Mr Hopkin, who hadn't witnessed the incident and was on the other side of the school, recalls when he was told Ms Hopkin had been stabbed.

“We were on break. I was in the maths staff room having a chat with a colleague and I noticed there were a few kids around and clearly something had happened,” he told the Western Mail.

“A colleague came into the staff room shouting towards me, running up the corridor. She said words to the effect of, ‘Don’t panic, Liz has been stabbed in the lower school! Of course I did panic and I ran to the lower school and as soon as I got there I could sense things going on. I think the incident was still ongoing at that point, sort of coming towards an end.

“In the lower school there are some old stone steps going up to the old Victorian part of the school and Liz was sitting on the steps covered in blood. What I first saw was how blood was coming out of her neck.

“I'm a first-aider but my training went to pot at that point. I got a tissue out of my pocket and put it on her neck. She looked at me and just said, ‘Sorry. I could see she thought she was going to die.

“The first-aiders arrived and we also had some dental nurses at the school that day doing some work with the kids and they ran over and took over until the paramedics arrived. It took a while for the paramedics, or what felt like a while, because police were trying to make sure the scene was safe for them to enter.

“The air ambulance then came and took over. If you knew Liz, you wouldn't be surprised that she was still trying to calm other people down around her and she was in a panic because she was worried about other pupils and felt she should have held on to the girl for longer. They got her stable and lying down on a stretcher and then took her out on a helicopter.