A seventh-grade boy opened fire in a school in Belgrade, Serbia on Wednesday, killing eight children and one school guard, according to the local authorities. There were six other children and one teacher who were injured in the horrific attack, per the New York Post.
The authorities did not release the name of the suspect, but only referred to him by his initials, K.K. The statement stated that the suspect was a student at the school, born in 2009. Following the incident, the student was quickly arrested by the police in the school yard, per the report.
The authorities received a call about the incident at around 8:40 am, suggesting that there had been a shooting at the Vladislav Ribnikar primary school. The local media managed to capture the authorities escorting the young suspect from the school, with a hood over the young boy’s face, per the report.
Though mass shootings in Serbia are generally rare, the last mass shooting occurred in 2013, when a Balkan war veteran had killed 13 people in a Serbian village. The report noted that experts have suggested that there may be too many weapons floating around the country, remnants of the country’s wars in the 1990s.
Milan Milosevic, a father to a young girl in the school, apparently said that when he heard about the attack, he immediately went looking for his daughter.
He said: “I asked where is my child, but no one could tell me anything at first. Then she [his daughter] called and we found out she was out.”
“He (the shooter) fired first at the teacher and then the children who ducked under the desks,” Milosevic said, quoting his daughter. “She said he was a quiet boy and a good student.”
Police sealed off the blocks around the school, in the center of Belgrade.
Veselin Milic, head of Belgrade police, said that the suspect had two petrol bombs and had “made a list of kids he planned to kill and their classes.” The authorities identified the victims as seven girls and one boy who were killed, all of them born between 2009 and 2011, per The Guardian.
He added: “The sketch looks like something from a video game or a horror movie, which indicates that he planned in detail, by classes, whom to liquidate.”
The boy reportedly used two of his father’s guns in the tragedy.
