14 KILLED BY PRAGUE SHOOTER
Disgruntled university student unleashes hell in Czech capital
At least 14 people were killed and 25 others injured when a student opened fire on Thursday at a university in Prague — where harrowing images captured young people huddled on the scaffolding of a building as they sought cover from the gunman, officials said.
Authorities responded to the shooting — the Czech Republic’s deadliest mass shooting — around 3 p.m. local time at Charles University’s Faculty of Arts building near the Czech Republic capital’s Old Town, which is a popular tourist destination, the Prague police said.
The shooter — who hasn’t been identified by police but was named in local media as 24-yearold David Kozák — died in what authorities believe was likely a suicide.
Police gave no details about the victims or a possible motive for the slaughter. However, Czech Interior Minister Vit Rakusan said there is no suspected link to any extremist ideology or groups.
‘Inspired by terror’
Investigators believe the gunman also killed his father earlier Thursday in his hometown of Hostoun, just west of Prague.
Police Chief Martin Vondrasek said the shooter was a student in the philosophy department of Charles University and described him as an excellent student with no criminal record.
Authorities had “unconfirmed information from an account on a social network that he was supposedly inspired by one terrorist attack in Russia in the autumn of this year,” Vondrasek told reporters, adding the shooter was a legal holder of several firearms.
Cops found a large arsenal of weapons at the downtown university building where the shooting took place.
A Telegram account under Kozák’s name contained troubling posts like “I hate the world and want to leave as much pain as possible,” from Dec. 17. The last post, from Dec. 19, said, “I have a ringing in my ears . . . like some kind of f--king fireflies. I wanted to rip my ears out.”
“It was a premeditated horrific act that started in the Kladno region and unfortunately ended here,” Vondrasek said.
Kozák is also suspected in the killings of another man and his 2-month-old daughter who were found last week shot dead in woods in a village outside Prague, the chief added.
His death was likely a suicide but authorities are still investigating whether he may have been killed by police who returned fire.
“We always thought that this was a thing that did not concern us. Now it turns out that, unfortunately, our world is also changing and the problem of the individual shooter is emerging here as well,” Prague Mayor Bohuslav Svoboda told Czech Television of the horrifying act of violence.
A person resembling Kozák was seen toting a large gun on the roof of the university in a pair of photos circulating on social media.
“I saw a young person on the gallery who had some weapon in his hand, like an automatic weapon, and shooting toward the Manes Bridge,” Petr Nedoma, the director of a gallery in Jan Palach Square, where the philosophy department of the university is located, told Czech TV of his brief encounter with the shooter.
‘Stuck inside classroom’
“Repeatedly, with some interruptions, then I saw as he shot, put hands up and threw the weapon down on the street, it lay there on the pedestrian crossing,”
Meanwhile, sirens and police vehicles surrounded the campus building while onlookers appeared panicked and tried to flee, social media videos showed.
“Currently stuck inside my classroom in Prague,” journalist Jakob Weizman wrote on X alongside a photo of the darkened classroom where he was sheltering. “Shooter is dead, but we are waiting to be evacuated. Praying to make it out alive.
“Locked the door before the shooter tried to open it. F--king hell,” he lamented.
Another social media user shared a shocking photo of what appeared to be students huddling desperately on the scaffolding of the university building.
“Suddenly I heard shooting,” one witness told a Czech news outlet, according to the BBC.
“I looked out of my balcony and saw the police arrive. A few officers were having a hard time stopping people walking towards the scene,” said Targ Patience, a British Australian who was staying in an apartment near the scene.