Student armed with rifle and explosives kills 18 at college in Crimea
‘My friend was killed before my eyes. I saw her fall and she did not move any more. I saw how the boys just fell’
AT LEAST 18 people were killed and scores more injured at a college in Crimea yesterday after a student detonated an explosive device before opening fire with a hunting rifle.
The attack took place at a polytechnic school in the Crimean town of Kerch, a strategic city from where a new bridge connects the contested peninsula with mainland Russia.
Sergey Aksyonov, the Kremlinappointed head of Crimea, said the suspect was an 18-year-old student at the college. He was identified in the Russian press as Vladislav Roslyakov, and had reportedly obtained a hunting license – allowing him to purchase rifles and shotguns – last month.
A photo of Roslyakov with a rifle on a campus stairwell was widely circulated on social media after the attack.
Reports suggest that as well as detonating the explosive device Roslyakov opened fire on fellow students and teachers. He then killed himself.
Videos from the scene circulated on Russian social media. One featured an unidentified woman who said: “The college was blown up. We ran and kids just laid there. My friend was killed right before my eyes. I saw her fall and she didn’t move any more. I saw how the boys just fell.”
Another eyewitness said: “They ran across the second floor with machine guns – well I don’t know what they had – opening rooms and killing everyone that they could find, everyone they came across.”
A video published by local news outlet Kerch.com.ru showed the head of the school describing the events as another Beslan – referring to the 2004 terrorist siege on a school in North Ossetia that resulted in the death of over 300 people, many of them children.
School shootings are relatively rare in Russia, where access to firearms is tightly restricted, but attacks are not unheard of using other weapons.
In January, 15 students were injured when two teenagers went on a knife rampage at a school in Perm, a city 620 miles east of Moscow.
President Vladimir Putin held a brief press conference yesterday afternoon to call for a moment of silence for the victims and said investigators are now working to understand Roslyakov’s motives.
An unidentified student told the RBC news agency that the shooter, “very much hated the school because of its evil teachers”. Roslyakov had hinted he planned to “take revenge on them”, said the source, who claimed to be the shooter’s friend.
Crimea, formally recognised by the international community as part of Ukraine, has been under Russian control since 2014 following Moscow’s annexation of the Black Sea peninsula.
Kerch is located on the eastern tip of Crimea, where a bridge to the Russian mainland recently opened.