ON HIS WAY TO MASS MURDER
Student stalks college halls before killing 19
A VENGEFUL student stalked the halls of his college with a shotgun and home-made bombs yesterday, killing 19 and injuring more than 40.
CCTV caught Vladislav Roslyakov, 18, walking down a stairwell holding a weapon, while video showed fellow students screaming as they tried to flee the building.
Pupils and staff at the college in the Crimean city of Kerch described hearing multiple explosions and a hail of gunfire.
One said the walls were ‘covered in blood’, while another said the gunman ‘killed anyone he could find’. Soldiers and police rushed to the school at around noon, suspecting a terrorist attack in the disputed peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
But as fellow students told of Roslyakov’s fascination with weapons and serial killers, it was later classified as mass murder.
The fourth-year student, said to have ‘ hated his studies and vowed revenge on his teachers’, set off a bomb packed with nails in the crowded canteen before killing himself in the library of Kerch Polytechnic College.
Its director Olga Grebennikova said: ‘ There are bodies everywhere, children’s bodies everywhere ... He ran about throwing explosives, then ran around the second floor with guns, opened the office doors, and killed anyone he could find.’
Anastasia Yenshina, 15, said: ‘Everyone started running. They told us to leave the building through the gym. The wall was covered in blood.
‘We climbed over the fence to escape, and we could still hear explosions. People were crying.’
Roslyakov, said to have obtained a hunting licence last month, wore a white T- shirt with a black logo and jeans, similar to Columbine school killer Eric Harris in Colorado in 1999. Friends characterised him as a loner who was obsessed with military history and weapons.
Roslyakov, who was studying electrical engineering at the 850pupil college, had been off sick this week, and had deleted all of his social media accounts.
Pictures in the aftermath of the shootings showed his bag filled with what appeared to be ten home-made bombs and dozens of shotgun rounds.