A Serbian schoolboy who reportedly killed eight of his classmates had a list of people to kill and called the police right after the attack to confess.
In Serbia, the shooting also killed a security guard and hurt six students and a history teacher.
Veselin Mili, the head of the Belgrade Police, said that Kosta Kecmanovi, who was 13, stole his father’s gun and put together four Molotov bombs before the attack on Wednesday morning that killed seven girls and one boy, all under the age of 14.
“A student came forward to say that he shot several people,” Mr. Mili said at an emotional news conference after the attack at Vladislav Ribnikar Elementary School at 8:40 a.m.
The police chief said that the shooter had made a list of the children he wanted to kill, with the most important ones marked, and a map of the school.
“The sketch looks like something from a video game or a horror movie,” said Mr. Mili.
“He called the cops after committing the crime. He made a plan for how to get into school and how to get out of school. He chose the most important goals,” he said.
One newspaper said that as police in bulletproof vests and helmets put handcuffs on him, they asked him why he had done it.
Local media reported that Kecmanovi said, “I shot because I am a psychopath,” before he was led out of the school, where worried parents had gathered, and into a ready police car with a coat over his head.
The Worst Tragedy to Hit Serbia
After what the education minister, Branko Rui, called “the worst tragedy to hit Serbia in recent history,” all classes were canceled for three days and a national day of grief was held.
Dragan Vlahovi, who was killed, was in his early 50s and was called “a friend to all of us” by students at the elementary school, where kids ages 7 to 15 are taught.
The head of the Vracar district, Milan Nedeljkovic, said that he “wanted to stop the tragedy, but he was the first victim.”
The tweet below confirms the news:
Two of the six injured children are in danger of dying because they were shot in the neck and head. The teacher, Tatjana Stevanovi, who is also in her early 50s, was “in danger” because she was shot in the stomach and hands.
Kecmanovi called the cops to say what he had done two minutes after the school told them about the shooting. Every patrol that could be sent out was, and the city of Vracar, which has many museums and offices, was locked down.
When Kecmanovi was arrested in the schoolyard, he calmly put up his hands and worked with the cops. This was caught on students’ phones and shared on social media.
During interviews with the cops, it was said that he didn’t seem sorry or emotional. Reports say that he could spend as little as three years in a facility for young offenders.
The interior minister, Bratislav Gasic, said that the suspect’s father was also being held.
“The father says the guns were locked in a safe with a code, but the kid took the pistols and three magazines with 15 bullets each, so he must have known the code,” he said.
Local media said that Kecmanovi, who is the son of a well-known radiologist at a private hospital in Belgrade, was a star student who won math awards.
It was said that he went on a shooting spree with two guns, including a 9mm semi-automatic pistol, and five rounds after getting an “F” in history.
But the police chief said that the school shooting, which was one of the worst in Europe’s history, had been planned for a month and that the reason was still being looked into.
The attacker went into the school hall, where he killed three kids and the security guard. He went to his history class on the first floor, where the bodies of five children were found.
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He Was Saved From Death for Sure
One of the kids who stayed alive in the classroom told his mother that he only made it by pretending to be dead.
“He was saved from certain death because he was lying down next to his dead friend when the shooting happened. “He laid down next to her and pretended to be dead,” she said.
“When he could no longer hear the gunshots, he jumped out of the window covered in blood and went home, where he told me, ‘He killed them all, all of them.”
Tomislav Momirovic is in charge of trade in Serbia. He has two kids at Vladislav Ribnikar Elementary School, who were safely removed. Famous people like a TV host, a basketball player, and a pop singer all have kids at the school, which is in the wealthy part of the Serbian city called Vracar.
Serbia has strict gun rules, so mass shootings are rare. However, people have been worried for a long time about weapons left over from the Balkans War.
In 2015, Rade Sefer killed six people at his son’s wedding in the town of Senta in the north, and a year later, Sinisa Zlatic used an assault gun to kill five people and hurt 22 others in the town of Zitiste.
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