Student, 12, kills one, wounds two, in Finnish school shooting
A 12-year-old student has opened fire at a secondary school in southern Finland, killing one student and seriously wounding two others, police said.
Heavily armed police cordoned off the lower secondary school – a large educational institution including lower and upper secondary schools with a total of about 800 students – in the city of Vantaa, just outside the capital Helsinki, after receiving a call about a shooting incident at 9.08am local time.
Police said both the suspect and the victims were 12 years old.
One of the students had died instantly after being shot, Eastern Uusimaa chief of police Ilkka Koskimaki said. The other two were seriously wounded, he said.
The weapon used in the shooting was a registered handgun licensed to the suspect’s relative, Detective Inspector Kimmo Hyvarinen said.
The suspect was arrested in the Helsinki area less than one hour after the shooting with a handgun in his possession, police said.
He admitted to the shooting in an initial police hearing but there is no immediate word of the motive, police said, adding that the case is being investigated as a murder and two attempted murders.
Finnish president Alexander Stubb and prime minister Petteri Orpo offered condolences to the families of the victims in postings on X with both saying they were shocked over the shooting.
Mr Orpo said: “What makes it particularly shocking is the age of the victim and the suspect.
“I can assure you that this [shooting] will be carefully reviewed and conclusions will be drawn that this will not happen again.”
The minimum age of criminal liability in Finland is 15 years, which means the suspect cannot be formally arrested.
A suspect younger than 15 can only be heard by the police, after which they will be handed over to Finland's child welfare authorities.
The interior ministry said all state agencies and institutions will lower the national flag to half staff today.
Private households are encouraged to join in the commemoration, the ministry said.
In the past decades, Finland has witnessed two major deadly school shootings.
In november 2007, an 18- year old student opened fire with a semi-automatic pistolat t the Jokela high school in Tuusula, southern Finland, killing nine people. He was later found dead with self-inflicted wounds. Less than a year later, in September 2008, a 22-yearold student killed ten people with a semi-automatic pistol at a vocational college in Kauhajoki, south-west Finland, before fatally shooting himself.
There are more than 1.5 million licensed firearms and about 430,000 licence holders in a nation of 5.6 million, according to the Finnish interior ministry.
Hunting and gun ownership have long traditions in the sparsely-populated Nordic country.
Following the school shootings in 2007 and 2008, Finland tightened its gun laws by raising the minimum age for firearms ownership.
What makes it particularly shocking is the age of the victim and the suspect Finnish prime minister Petteri Orpo