Milica StojanovicBelgradeBIRNMay 3, 202314:44Eight pupils and a security worker were shot dead on Wednesday at a Belgrade school by another pupil in a bloodbath that has stunned the country.
Ambulance cars stand ready as police block a street near the Vladislav Ribnikar elementary school in Belgrade, Serbia, May 3 2023. Photo: EPA-EFE/ANDREJ CUKIC
Eight pupils and one security worker in the Belgrade elementary school Vladislav Ribnikar were killed in a mass shooting on Wednesday morning. Seven more people were injured in the attack, six pupils and a history teacher.
Police said they had arrested a minor, born in 2009, for the shooting, allegedly committed with his father’s guns. The father was also detained. He had a licence for both guns his son used.
Chief of Belgrade police Veselin Milic said police received the first call about the shooting around 8:40am during the first class, when the school deputy director reported a shooting incident. Soon after, according to Milic, the suspect called the police and told them what he did.
According to Milic, the victims were seven girls and one boy. Five of the killed children were born in 2009, one in 2010 and two in 2011.
Milic said police had established that the suspect “planned the execution of this criminal offence over a long period of time”.
“The motive has not yet been determined nor has he told us,” Milic told media.
He added that the suspect first shot at a security worker, then at students in the hall and he then entered the history classroom, where his class was. Milic said the boy had a list with names of children he allegedly want to kill. Milic also said that, according to school staff, the suspect was an exemplary pupil.
Asked about previous reports about violence the suspect was exposed to, Education Minister Branko Ruzic confirmed that physical violence against him occurred at a private acting school, but dismissed the connection between the incidents. Ruzic mostly blamed “Western values”, the internet and video games for the crime.
Health Minister Danica Grujicic said six students and one teacher are still in the hospital and that three of them are in a critical state.
Students in Serbia will not go to school on Wednesday afternoon. Friday, Saturday and Sunday will be days of mourning.
In recent years, there were several lesser incidents in Serbian schools. In November 2022, during a class in the technical school in Trstenik, a student approached a professor from behind and slipped the chair she was sitting on, while the other two filmed her falling to the floor and posted it on social networks.
A female student stabbed a math teacher in the stomach in an elementary school near Smederevska Palanka in February 2021.
Serbian Education Ministry research from 2014 concluded that some 65 per cent of students had been exposed to violence, and 42 per cent had been violent. The research was conducted in 237 elementary schools from 2006 to 2013 and some 124,000 people participated: some 109,000 students and some 15,000 adults are employed in Serbian schools.
Serbia has 39.1 firearms per 100 residents according to 2018 Small Arms Survey research. Local media in Serbia reported Interior Ministry 2016 data that there are some 900,000 registered firearms.
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