Authorities confirm shooting in Belgrade was pre-planned as school-boy kills 8 people
A 14-year-old boy opened fire in his Belgrade classroom on Wednesday morning, shooting dead eight fellow pupils and a security guard in a pre-planned attack and wounding seven others, Serbian officials said.
Using his father's handgun, the boy fired first at the security guard and three girls in the hallway and then entered a history class and shot at the teacher and classmates, police said. The teacher and six pupils were hospitalized, some with life-threatening injuries.
Police said a seventh-grade student had been arrested in the schoolyard after calling the police and confessing to the shooting. An investigation into his motives was underway.
Veselin Milic, head of Belgrade police, said the attacker had two guns and two petrol bombs and had pre-planned everything. "He said himself that he planned to commit this crime. This is a list of children he planned to execute. He made a plan of how to enter and exit the school, that was found at his desk," he told a press conference.
Officers in helmets and bulletproof vests cordoned off the area around the school. Bodies were carried out and put into funeral vehicles.
The interior ministry said eight children and a security guard had been killed and six children had been hospitalized along with the teacher. Interior Minister Bratislav Gasic said that the father of the shooter had also been arrested.
Education Minister Branko Ruzic declared three days of national mourning starting on Friday.
Reuters
