12-year-old boy kills classmate at school in Finland

Helsinki. A twelve-year-old boy shot dead a classmate at a school in the city of Vantaa, north of Helsinki, on Tuesday and seriously injured two other children before being arrested.

The police arrived around 9 a.m. local time (06 a.m. GMT) at the school, which has about 800 students between the ages of 7 and 15, spread across two different locations. The suspect was arrested around 10 a.m. in Helsinki.

“Today, after 9 a.m., a shooting took place at the Viertola primary school in Vantaa (…) during which a sixth grade student was killed,” said Ilkka Koskimäki, a police officer during a press conference, indicating that He died instantly.

“Two children were also seriously injured,” he added.

The flags of all public buildings and institutions in the country will fly at half-mast on Wednesday as a sign of mourning, the Ministry of the Interior said.

The arrest of the suspect, who was carrying a firearm and went to the same school, “was carried out peacefully,” the police said.

The gun belongs to a relative of the shooter and an investigation has been opened for murder and attempted murder.

At the moment the young man will not be imprisoned because he is under 15 years old and cannot be declared criminally responsible, said Markku Särkkä, another police officer. He has already been interrogated and will be handed over to social services.

“The police are investigating the motive for the act and the reasons behind this incident,” Särkkä said in a statement posted on the police website.

confined children

A video published by the newspaper Iltalehti shows two police officers holding a person face down on the ground who would be the suspect. A witness told the newspaper that shots rang out in the yard. “At first, I didn’t understand it was a gun. Then there was a terrible scream and the children ran into the yard,” he said.

Janne Savolainen was in contact with her daughter while the children were confined to their classes. “They were able to send me WhatsApp messages, saying that they were sitting on the floor waiting for instructions from the teachers,” he said.

Another student indicated that he and his classmates had just left their class to play sports when the teachers yelled at them to come in and sit on the floor.

The students remained in the classroom all morning and were only able to meet their parents at noon, an AFP correspondent at the scene reported.

The parents told reporters that the shooting had taken place in a classroom, but police did not provide details about the circumstances.

Precedents in the 2000s

“I can only imagine the pain and worry many families are feeling right now,” Interior Minister Mari Rantanen said on the social network X.

Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said he was “deeply shocked” by the event.

Finland experienced two similar tragedies in the early 2000s.

In November 2007, an 18-year-old opened fire at a school in Jokela, about fifty kilometers north of the capital, killing eight people: the principal, the nurse and six students. The attacker committed suicide after the attack.

A year later, in September 2008, a shooting took place at a vocational school in Kauhajoki (west), perpetrated by 22-year-old Matti Juhani Saari, killing ten people. He also committed suicide shortly after.