A 14-year-old teenager opened fire in a school in central Belgrade on Wednesday, killing at least nine people, including students and the school guard.
The death toll after the Belgrade school massacre has risen to nine. Another 15 people were injured, most of them children, after a 14-year-old student fired a gun. According to Serbian public television, a history teacher was also shot by a student. Eight other children and the school guard were killed. Other three children are in surgery right now, with one of them in critical condition.
Police received a call about shots fired at Vladislav Ribnikar Elementary School around 8:40 AM, according to a police news release.
The 14-year-old student opened fire when he entered the school corridor. The Serbian press also writes that the guard was the first to be attacked, then he allegedly fired randomly at the people who were in the hallway, killing eight students, the school guard and seriously injuring three others. Vladislav Ribnikar School is located right in the center of Belgrade. Primary schools in Serbia have eight grades.
“He started shooting randomly, he had two gun chargers in his hand, he shot the history teacher first, then he continued. He killed two of our friends, I lay on top of them so they would think I was dead. She left the classroom, but the shots were still heard,” a school girl reported. Apparently the gun belonged to his father.
The attacker’s colleagues said he was a quiet and secluded person. The press from Belgrade writes that the attacker’s name is Kosta Kecmanović
and his parents are doctors. Kostas was a good student, participating in many school competitions. Last year, he also won third place in a municipal history contest.
“He had no reason to do that,” say children scared of Wednesday’s attack. Another colleague says that the attacker was always nice and had good grades, was a good student and that she would never expect him to do something like this.
The previous night, he went to a party with other colleagues. The students, who were at the same party as the perpetrator of the massacre the night before, said that the young man behaved quite normally and did not notice anything about him that would raise the suspicion that something was wrong. This morning when he came to school he immediately started shooting at random and chaos ensued. The students jumped out of the window and ran away.
The police detained the boy, who was taken out of the school with handcuffs and a jacket over his face. Novosti Serbian tabloid reported that the student who shot was under the influence of drugs.
The child who killed 8 schoolmates and the guard of the educational institution had planned his attack a month ago, Serbian police said in a press statement
The police chief of Belgrade says the 14-year-old boy had been preparing his attack for a month. A list with the names of the children he planned to kill was found on him, the paper being shown publicly by the police chief. According to the police chief, the child took his father’s gun and had another gun and four Molotov cocktails in his bag. “When he got to the school he took out his gun and shot the guard.”
According to police chief Milić, upon arriving at the school, she immediately pulled a gun from her bag and shot the guard, then turned to the children sitting at a table and killed two other girls, then continued down the corridor to the history class. From the door, he shot the teacher and other students, then went to the school yard, dropped the gun and called the police. He was found and arrested in the yard of the institution. Belgrade’s police chief said the student may have been the victim of bullying at school, adding that he recently arrived at the hospital with injuries after allegedly being bullied during an stating that he recently arrived at the hospital with injuries, after allegedly being assaulted during an acting class.
The boy’s father has been arrested, Interior Minister Bratislav Gašić told a news conference. He said both guns found in the boy’s possession were legally owned by his father. “The father claims he had several guns and kept them locked up. He had several guns from 2016 and 2017 and that the safe had a code. Obviously, the kid had the code since he managed to get his hands on those two guns,” Gašić said. He added that according to unofficial information, the boy was taken hunting by his father and thus learned to shoot a gun.
According to Serbian legal provisions, the boy “is considered criminally irresponsible, because he has not reached the age of 14”.
Kosta Kecmanović’s father is a renowned doctor, who comes from a well-known and respected family in the country. The boy allegedly stole the two guns with which he killed his colleagues and a security guard from his father, who is a gun collector.