Serbia in shock: 13-year-old shoots nine people at school

A 13-year-old boy caused a massacre at his own school in Belgrade on Wednesday morning. He entered his own classroom and shot classmates and other staff with a pistol. He killed nine people – eight students and a guard, as Veselin Milic, the director of the Belgrade police, said at a press conference in the Serbian capital in the afternoon. Six other students and a teacher were injured. The country is in shock.

The teenager himself called the police after the crime and officers arrested him. He was born in July 2009, Milic said when asked by reporters. Under Serbian law, he is not of age and cannot be brought before a court. Police arrested his parents later that day. The boy was transferred to a neuropsychiatric clinic after his arrest.

“This is one of the most difficult days in modern Serbian history,” President Aleksandar Vucic told the press in the evening. Serbia is united in mourning. Hours earlier, the government had declared a three-day state mourning.

The boy had planned the act over a long period of time, police director Milic continued. The two pistols he was carrying belonged to his father. In addition, he had prepared four incendiary bombs, which he did not use.

On the desk at home, the officers found a sketch of the architectural features of the school and a list of names of possible victims. “The skit looks like something out of a video game or a horror movie,” Milic said. The motives were initially unclear.

The father of the 13-year-old therefore had a valid firearms permit. The police suspect him of not keeping track of them. The boy should not have had access to it. As President Vucic explained in his press conference, the father is a “model doctor”. At the same time, he expressed surprise that the father had taken his son to a shooting range and practiced shooting with him.

As in other Balkan countries, acts of violence are not uncommon in everyday life in Serbia. Bloody settlements between criminal gangs and murders of women and children within families are relatively common. But for a child to commit such an act is new in Serbia.

The bloody act also provoked international reactions of sympathy and dismay. “We would like to express our deepest condolences to the families and relatives of the victims,” ​​EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in Brussels. (sda/dpa)