Among others, Serbia is trying to introduce some family measures similar to the Hungarian ones.Continue reading
In Belgrade, eight students and a security guard were killed in an elementary school on Wednesday when a seventh grade student started shooting. Furthermore, six students and a teacher were injured. They are currently being treated in hospital.
President of the Republic Katalin Novák on Wednesday offered condolences to the families of the victims of a shooting in Belgrade and to the Serbian people, hirado.hu reports.
On behalf of Hungary, I express my condolences and sympathy to Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and the Serbian people for the tragic school shooting in Belgrade. Our prayers are with the victims and the bereaved families,
Katalin Novák wrote in a Facebook message.
As hirado.hu further reports, according to Belgrade Police Chief Veselin Milic, the 14-year-old boy shot at students, teachers and school security guards with his father’s pistol shortly after school started.
The underage boy was detained by the police. According to the information, the boy had been planning the attack for at least a month. However, the motive for the crime is unknown.
The boy had with him a list of the names of the students he planned to shoot, as well as a map showing the layout of the school and the location of the classrooms.
Investigations also revealed that the boy had chosen Wednesday as the day to commit the crime because that was the day of his class’ first history lesson and the history classroom was closest to the school entrance. According to the police chief, there has never been such a school massacre in Serbia.
The boy’s father was also arrested. The man told police he owned several weapons, had a gun license for all of them, and kept them in a safe with a combination lock. He did not know that his son also knew the combination. To police knowledge, the juvenile offender and his father frequently went to shooting ranges for practice.
The head of the ministry said,
that the spread of movies, computer games and so-called Western values are largely responsible for such attacks. To prevent such incidents from becoming commonplace in Serbia, he said, a rethinking of the Serbian education system is needed.
A Serbian union of education workers has announced a total work stoppage for the coming days. Members of the union said that teachers are not safe, as Wednesday’s incident proved, and that despite repeated calls for more security checks at school entrances, no progress has been made so far.
Following the South Slav wars in the 1990s, many weapons were also in the hands of civilians, with an average of 40 firearms per 100 inhabitants in Serbia. School shootings are very rare in this country.
via hirado.hu, Featured image: Katalin Novák Facebook