20 killed in Crimea school gun attack
MOSCOW— An 18-year-old student strode into his vocational school in Crimea on Wednesday and opened fire, killing 19 students and wounding more than 50 others before killing himself. It was the greatest loss of life in school violence in Russia since the Beslan terrorist attack by Chechen separatists in 2004. A total of 333 people were killed, mostly children, during the assault. —
MOSCOW— An 18-year-old student strode into his vocational school in Crimea on Wednesday and opened fire at people, killing 19 students and wounding more than 50 others before killing himself.
It wasn’t clear what prompted Vladislav Roslyakov, described as a shy loner, to go on a rampage at Kerch Polytechnic College in the Black Sea city of Kerch.
Cold blood
“He was walking around and shooting students and teachers in cold blood,” said Sergei Aksyonov, the regional leader in Crimea.
His mother, a nurse, was helping to treat victims at a local hospital after the shootings, unaware yet that her son was accused of the rampage and was already dead.
Rare school shooting
Such school shootings are rare, and Wednesday’s attack was by far the worst by a disgruntled student in Russia, which annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.
By the end of the day, Crimean authorities said the death toll stood at 19, apparently not including the shooter. Fiftythree people were wounded, including 12 in serious condition.
It was the greatest loss of life in school violence in Russia since the Beslan terrorist attack by Chechen separatists in 2004, in which 333 people were killed, mostly children.
Russian President Vladimir Putin deplored the attack as a “tragic event” and offered his condolences to the victims’ families at a news conference in Sochi, where he was meeting with Egyptian President AbdelFattah el-Sissi.
Investigators said Roslyakov “moved from room to room and, like an experienced special forces fighter, first threw a homemade grenade before going to shoot people,” Kommersant wrote.
Guns are tightly restricted in Russia. Civilians can own only hunting rifles and smooth-bore shotguns and must undergo significant background checks.
Two earlier incidents
Roslyakov had only recently received a permit to own a shotgun and bought 150 cartridges just a few days ago, according to local officials.
Russia has seen several violent attacks by students in recent years, but none of them were even remotely as brutal as the Kerch rampage.
Early this year, a teenager armed with an ax attacked fellow students at a school in Buryatia in southern Siberia, wounding five students and a teacher.
The attacker also ignited a firebomb in class and tried to kill himself before being apprehended.
In another attack in January, two teenagers stabbed children and their teacher with knives, wounding 15 people, and then attempted to kill each other before being detained.
Over the past few years, Russian security agencies have arrested several Ukrainians accused of plotting terror attacks in Crimea, but no attacks have occurred.