Tuesday marked yet another school shooting but this time it didn’t happen in the U.S. A teen in Belgrade, Serbia, reportedly opened fire at Vladislav Ribnikar primary school, killing nine children and a school guard.
The school is located in the Vračar area.
Several other children and a teacher were hospitalized, The Associated Press reported.
Update 10:37 a.m. EDT May 3: Officials said the teen had a 9mm pistol, a second small-caliber pistol in a bag and four Molotov cocktails during the attack.
Initially, the teen was said to be 14, but The Associated Press is now reporting that he is 13. CNN and Reuters, as of late Monday morning, continue to say the teen is 14.
Police said the teen had a list of people he wanted to target and had drawn sketches of the classroom as part of his plan to carry out the attack, the AP reported.
The guns used belonged to the teen’s father.
“The parent had several pieces of weapon and kept them locked up. The safe had a code. Obviously, the kid had the code as soon as he managed to get hold of those two guns. And three frames full of 15 bullets each,” Serbian Interior Minister Bratislav Gasic said, according to CNN.
They also said that the teen killed the security guard first before entering a classroom where he shot at the students and another staff member.
“Upon arriving at school, he immediately pulled the pistol out of his bag and shot (...) the security guard. He then went to the on-duty staff member and sat down at his desk like he did nothing wrong. There was one girl at her desk, another at the piano. He took their lives,” Belgrade Police Chief Veselin Milić said, according to CNN.
“Then he went out into the corridor to the history classroom, put another clip in on the way. He went into the classroom and immediately shot the teacher and the students there from the door. Then he left the classroom, went out into the schoolyard, releasing the magazine from the weapon, throwing it down the steps, called the police, and after that we took him into custody,” Milić said.
The teen’s father has also been arrested. Officials said he had recently gone to a shooting range with his son, CNN reported.
Officials have also updated the number of those killed to 10 — eight girls, one boy and the security guard.
Original report: A parent said the alleged shooter, whose full name has not been released, went into his daughter’s classroom and started shooting at her teacher and classmates, and the children took cover under their desks.
Most were able to escape the gunfire through a back door, officials said, according to the AP.
Police said that the 14-year-old alleged shooter, initially identified by his initials, K.K., used his father’s gun and was described as a “quiet guy” with good grades.
The alleged gunman was in seventh grade and was arrested in the schoolyard after he had called the police himself, telling them what he had done, and waited to be arrested, according to CNN.
Police are trying to determine the motive, but said that the alleged gunman planned the attack that happened in a history class, which was chosen because it was near the school’s entrance, Belgrade’s Police Chief Veselin Milić said.
“All police forces are still on the ground and are intensively working to shed light on all the facts and circumstances that led to this tragedy,” a statement from Serbia’s Interior Ministry said, according to CNN.
Mass shootings in Serbia are rare, the last happened in 2013 when a Balkan war veteran opened fire killing more than a dozen people in a village. But officials have been warning that massive amounts of weapons were left in the country after wars in the 1990s. They also said that not only the fighting of decades past but also economic hardships may trigger more violence, the AP reported.
Reuters reported that the country has strict gun laws and has allowed owners to either turn in or register illegal weapons.
Vracar Mayor Milan Nedeljkovic said after the shooting, “We have video surveillance, but now this is a lesson, we need metal detectors too. It is a huge tragedy ... something like this (happening) in Belgrade. Such a tragedy at an elementary school.”
The primary school has students whose ages are between 6 and 15.
