Crimean shooter ‘may have had help’

RUSSIAN authorities in Crimea were searching yesterday for a possible accomplice of the student whose shooting-and-bomb attack on his vocational school killed 20 people and wounded more than 50 others, a top official said.

The 18-year-old student, who authorities said later killed himself in the school’s library, was initially believed to be the only person involved in the carnage Wednesday at the Kerch Polytechnic College in the Black Sea city of Kerch.

Authorities haven’t provided a motive for the shooting. Teachers and classmates have described the attacker as a shy person with few friends.

But Sergei Aksyonov, the Kremlin-appointed head of Crimea, told Russian news agencies yesterday that it’s possible the attacker, identified as Vyacheslav Roslyakov, had an accomplice.

“The point is to find out who was coaching him for this crime,” he said. “He was acting on his own, we know that. But this scoundrel could not have prepared this attack on his own, in my opinion, and my colleagues’.”

The Kerch attack was by far the deadliest by a student in Russia, raising questions about school security. The vocational school had only a front desk with no security guards. Russia’s National Guard said yesterday it has deployed officers and riot police to all schools and colleges in Kerch. The Kerch attack was also the deadliest school violence in Russia since the 2004 Beslan incident.