Parents held after ‘star pupil’, 13, kills nine with father’s guns in massacre at school
Prosecutors in Serbia say suspect who drew up a hitlist of classmates is too young to face justice
‘He fired first at the teacher and then the children. My daughter said that he was a quiet boy and a good student’
THE parents of a 13-year-old schoolboy who murdered eight of his classmates were arrested yesterday after prosecutors said the suspect was too young to be held criminally responsible.
Kosta Kecmanović stole his father’s guns and assembled four Molotov cocktails for the attack, which killed seven girls and one boy, according to Veselin Milić, the police chief in Belgrade.
A security guard was also killed in the shooting in an affluent suburb of the Serbian capital, and six pupils and a history teacher were wounded.
Aleksandar Vucic, the president of Serbia, said Kecmanović would be held in custody in a “psychiatric ward”.
Two minutes after staff at the Vladislav Ribnikar Elementary School in the Vracar area raised the alarm, the suspect “came forward to say he shot several people”, the police chief said.
One newspaper reported that as he was handcuffed, he answered reporters’ questions by saying: “I shot because I am a psychopath.”
He was led to a police car with his head covered as parents tried to comfort their children.
Bratislav Gasic, Serbia’s interior minister, said the weapons were licensed and kept in a safe but the teenager, who had been to shooting ranges, apparently knew the safe’s code.
The father, a well-known radiologist at a private hospital in Belgrade, has yet to be charged.
“The father claims that the arms were locked in a safe with a code, but apparently the kid had the code, as he managed to take the pistols and three magazines with 15 bullets each,” Mr Gasic said.
Kecmanović had drawn up a list of the children he wanted to kill, with priority targets marked out, and a map of the school, Mr Milić said.
“The sketch looks like something from a video game or a horror movie, which indicates that he planned in detail, by classes, whom to liquidate,” he added.
All the children killed were born between 2009 and 2011.
Three days of national mourning were declared and all classes in Belgrade were cancelled after what Branko Ružić, the education minister, called the “greatest tragedy to befall Serbia in recent history”.
The murdered security guard was named as Dragan Vlahović, who was in his 50s, and who pupils described as “a friend to all of us”.
Milan Nedeljkovic, president of the Vracar district, said Mr Vlahović “wanted to prevent the tragedy and he was the first victim”.
Two of the six wounded children have life-threatening injuries while the teacher, Tatjana Stevanović, in her early 50s, was reported to be “in danger” with wounds to her stomach and hands.
As the alarm was raised following the shooting at around 8.40am, every available patrol was dispatched to the school and Vracar, home to museums and embassies, was locked down.
Kecmanović calmly raised his hands and co-operated with police during his arrest, which was filmed on pupils’ phones and uploaded to social media. He showed no remorse and little emotion during police interviews. He could face as little as three years in a juvenile correction centre, according to reports.
Local media described Kecmanović as a star pupil who won prizes in maths.
Some reports said his killings, carried out with two guns, including a 9mm semi-automatic pistol, came after his history teacher gave him an “F” grade.
But the police chief said that the school shooting had been planned for a month and the motive was being investigated.
The security guard and three children were killed in the school hall before Kecmanović headed to his history classroom, where five children’s bodies were later recovered.
The mother of one of the surviving pupils in the classroom said her son only survived by playing dead.
“He was saved from certain death when he lay down next to his dead friend at the time of the shooting. He lay down next to her and pretended to be dead,” she said. “At the moment when he no longer heard shots, he jumped out of the window covered in blood and went home, where he told me, ‘He killed them all, all of them’.”
Milan Milosevic said his daughter was in the history class. “He fired first at the teacher and then the children,” he said. “She said he was a quiet boy and a good student.”
Tomislav Momirović, Serbia’s minister for trade, has two children at the school, who were safely removed. A famous TV host, basketball star and pop singer also have children at the school.
Mr Ružić said: “Unfortunately, Serbia is also a part of that world where things like this happen more and more often.
“The influence of Western values is evident and it is clear to all of us that a major turnaround is needed so that this tragedy does not turn into a systemic model of behaviour.”
Mass shootings are rare in Serbia, which has strict gun laws, although there are long-standing fears over weapons left over from the Balkans war in the 1990s.