Topline
Eight students and a security guard were killed in a school shooting in Belgrade, Serbia, Wednesday—a rare occurrence in the country, which has stricter gun laws—with police saying a 14-year-old student has been arrested in connection with the attack.
Children wait in front of the Vladislav Ribnikar school after shooting in Belgrade, Serbia, on May … [+]
Key Facts
The shooting took place at the Vladislav Ribnikar school in central Belgrade, where the suspect allegedly opened fire in a classroom at around 8:40 a.m. local time.
An additional six students and a teacher were injured in the attack and have been taken to hospital, according to Serbia’s interior ministry.
Milan Milosevic, the father of a student in the class who escaped the shooting, told Serbian broadcaster N1 the suspect “first shot the teacher and then he started shooting randomly,” describing the alleged shooter as “quiet and a good pupil” who recently joined the class.
The suspect, who the Guardian notes police have only identified by the initials “KK,” allegedly used his father’s gun in the shooting, and was later arrested in the school’s playground.
An investigation into the shooting is underway, police said Wednesday.
Crucial Quote
The suspect “was a quiet guy, he looked nice, he had good grades, but we didn’t know much about him,” an unnamed student at the school told local media, as quoted by Sky News. “He was not so open with everybody. Definitely I wasn’t expecting this to happen.”
Key Background
The shooting marks the first major mass shooting to take place in Serbia since 2013, when a veteran of the Balkan wars opened fire in a village near Belgrade, killing 13 people. Serbia has relatively restrictive gun laws, prohibiting people from owning automatic and semi-automatic weapons and having regulations in place for obtaining licenses to own a handgun. The country still has a high prevalence of firearms, however, as a number of illegal weapons remain in the country from wars in the 1990s, making prohibited firearms easier to obtain on the black market.
Big Number
39.1. That’s the number of firearms per 100 people in Serbia, according to estimates from the Swiss-based Small Arms Survey. That marked the third-highest rate of civilian firearms in the world as of 2018—tied with Montenegro—behind only the U.S. (120.5 firearms per 100 residents) and Yemen (52.8).
Further Reading
Belgrade shooting: At least nine dead in Serbia school attack (BBC News)
School pupil kills eight children and a security guard in Belgrade (The Guardian)
Global Firearms Holdings (Small Arms Survey)
Serbia — Gun Facts, Figures and the Law (GunPolicy.org)
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2023/05/03/at-least-9-killed-in-rare-serbia-school-shooting-teenager-arrested/