A 12-year-old boy was killed and two others were seriously injured on Tuesday when a classmate opened fire at a primary school on the outskirts of Finland’s capital, Helsinki, police said.
The shooting took place at a primary school in Vantaa (southern Finland), where the perpetrator, also a minor, has already been arrested, the Finnish Police reported.
“Today, after 09:00 (06:00 GMT), a shooting occurred at a school (…) in which a sixth-grade student at the school died,” Ilkka Koskimaki, the area’s police chief, said at a press conference.
He added that two other minors were “seriously injured.”
The shooting took place at a primary school in the city of Vantaa, which has about 800 students, divided into two centers, from 7 to 15 years old, according to its website.
Police arrived at the establishment shortly after the shooting and the suspect was arrested an hour later in Helsinki.
“The arrest was made in calm. The suspect was carrying a weapon,” the police indicated on their website.
Parents of children attending the school told Finnish media that the shooting occurred in a classroom, and said they had spoken to their children on the phone.
The children were kept in the classrooms and numerous parents went to the school, where they were treated by the police, according to public television Yle.
A crisis cabinet was launched with educational and City Council staff, according to Finnish media.
Finnish Interior Minister Mari Rantanen said in a message on the social network X that the day had started in a “dreadful way.”
“I can only imagine the pain and worry that many families are experiencing right now,” he added.
Precedents in the 2000s
The Nordic country suffered two similar tragedies in the early 2000s.
In November 2007, an 18-year-old young man opened fire at a secondary school in Jokela, about fifty kilometers north of Helsinki, killing eight people: the principal, the nurse and six students. The attacker committed suicide after the attack.
A year later, in September 2008, a shooting occurred at a vocational school in Kauhajoki (west), perpetrated by a 22-year-old young man, in which ten people died. The attacker also committed suicide shortly after.
Since then, hundreds of schools have been threatened by similar acts, according to the Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention, which points to mental health problems as the main reason for this scourge.
The shooting this Tuesday occurred shortly after 9:00 a.m. local time (6:00 GMT) at the Viertola school, a few kilometers from the Helsinki-Vantaa airport, a school where nearly 800 students between seven and sixteen study. years and 90 employees work.
The authorities sent a dozen police cars and ambulances to the scene and alerted citizens to avoid traveling through the school area and not leave their homes until further notice, according to local media.
Shortly after 10:00 local time (7:00 GMT), the Police announced that they had arrested the suspect in the shooting, who apparently is a student at that school between twelve and thirteen years old.
“At least three children of the same age have been injured” and have been taken to hospitals, although at the moment it is unknown if the injuries are serious.
In the last two decades, there have been several indiscriminate shootings with firearms in Finland that have caused dozens of victims, including two massacres in two educational centers perpetrated by two young people who killed a total of 18 people before committing suicide.
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