A 13-year-old student has been arrested on suspicion of shooting dead eight students and a security guard at a school in Belgrade. The minor opened fire at 8:40 this Wednesday at the Vladislav Ribnikar primary school in the Serbian capital. A 53-year-old teacher, who was teaching a History class, was seriously injured. In addition to her, there are six students hospitalized, according to the Ministry of the Interior. The police took away the suspect in the massacre of his companions in handcuffs and with his head covered with a piece of clothing.
After the event, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic reported that the shooter was transferred to a psychiatric clinic. The Minister of Education, Branko Ruzic, declared three days of national mourning in a country of seven million inhabitants where a massacre in a school had never before occurred.
Veselin Milic, head of the Belgrade police, said that the detainee arrived at school with a 9-millimeter revolver, another smaller caliber revolver, and two Molotov cocktails in his backpack. He added that the teenager opened fire upon entering the school, first killing the guard and three students who were in the hallways, and then entering the history class classroom. “As soon as he crossed the door, he shot the teacher and the other students,” the police spokesman said. The fatalities among the students are seven girls and one boy born in 2009, 2010 and 2011, reports France Presse. The police were first alerted by the school’s vice principal, but two minutes later the attacker himself called. “He said he shot several people at the elementary school,” Milic said.
The Belgrade police chief added at a press conference that the teenager had planned everything carefully for a month. “He even had a list with the names of the minors he wanted to kill and their classes,” he noted. Interior Minister Bratislav Gasic announced that the alleged perpetrator’s father had also been detained. The Serbian Prosecutor’s Office told the Tanjug news agency that the father will be charged with the shooting, but not the son, since he has not yet reached the legal age of criminal responsibility, which is 14 years. The minor will meet them on July 30.
Evgenija, a 14-year-old student, claimed that she knew the attacker. “He was kind of quiet, seemed nice and had good grades. “I didn’t know much regarding him, he wasn’t very open with people,” she told Reuters. The young woman narrated how she witnessed part of the scene before running away: “I heard noises and thought some kids were setting off firecrackers… But then I saw the security guard fall to the ground.” The class the attacker entered was on the ground floor of the school, according to the local newspaper. Today. This made it easier for several students to escape through the windows.
Milan Milosevic, father of one of the students, told the N1 radio station that he went to the school following the shooting: “I saw the security guard lying under the table. “I saw two girls with blood on their shirts.” A young woman who studies at a secondary school near the school told state television RTS: “I saw children running out of the school, screaming. The parents came, they were terrified. “Then I heard three shots.”
The detained minor was fond of hunting and had learned to shoot while practicing that activity, according to Minister Gasic, reports Efe. “The father claims that the weapons were kept in a safe with a code, but apparently the aggressor knew the code, since he managed to take the two pistols and three magazines with 15 bullets each,” Gasic reported.
Mass shootings are rare in Serbia, which has very strict gun laws. But the Western Balkans are awash with hundreds of thousands of illegal weapons following the wars and unrest of the 1990s. Serbian authorities have granted several amnesties for owners to surrender or register them.
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