3rd May, 2023
Eight children and a security guard have been killed in Belgrade, Serbia after a 14-year-old school boy opened fire at an elementary school.
Six pupils and a teacher were also injured, the country’s interior ministry said, in the attack that occurred early Wednesday at the Vladislav Ribnikar school in central Belgrade.
Officers in helmets and bulletproof vests cordoned off the area around the school shortly after 08:40 local time (07:40 GMT), the BBC reports.
The 14-year-old shooter has been taken into custody by the police.
The suspect’s classmates said he walked into a history class, first shot the teacher and then turned his weapon on his fellow students.
The CNN quoted the Serbian authorities as saying that the suspect used a weapon belonging to his father in the attack.
The Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs said they were informed at 8.40 a.m. local time (2.40 a.m. ET) that a school shooting had happened at the Vladislav Ribnikar Elementary School in Vračar, an upscale area of the Serbian capital.
“All available police patrols were dispatched to the scene, where they immediately went onto the school grounds and apprehended a minor, a seventh-grader who is suspected to have fired several shots from his father’s gun at students and the school security guard,” the ministry said in a statement on Facebook.
There will be a three-day mourning period across the country, the government stated.
One of the children who sustained life-threatening injuries is said to be undergoing surgery.
Reuters reports that one of the parents, Milan Milosevic said his daughter was in the class where the gun was fired.
He said her daughter managed to escape, as the teenage attacker first shot the teacher and then he started shooting randomly.
“I saw the security guard lying under the table. I saw two girls with blood on their shirts. They say he (the shooter) was quiet and a good pupil. He recently joined their class,” added Milosevic, who rushed to the school after the shooting.
Belgrade’s Police Chief Veselin Milić told a news conference that the shooter called the police himself and told them what he did and waited in the schoolyard to be arrested.