Calay News
A shooting at an elementary school in central Belgrade left eight students and a guard dead, while six other students and a teacher were injured. The suspect, a 14-year-old pupil, was arrested in the schoolyard by police. The incident has sent shockwaves through Serbia, where school shootings are extremely rare. The tragedy occurred at around 8:40 a.m. and has been considered one of the worst incidents in Serbia’s history.
The president of the municipality of Vracar, Milan Nedeljkovic, confirmed the death of the school security guard and stressed that the guard wanted to prevent the tragedy but died in the process. The drama would have been worse if the guard had not stood in front of the shooting child. Police have begun an investigation into the incident, and the motives behind the attack are unknown.
Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic has offered condolences to the families of the victims and called for a thorough investigation into the incident. In addition, a day of national mourning has been declared in memory of the victims.
Sadly, school shootings are an increasingly common phenomenon around the world, and this is not the first time an incident like the one at the Vladislav Ribnikar elementary school in Belgrade has happened. In recent years, there have been several school shootings around the world that have left a large number of victims.
For example, one of the deadliest shootings in US history occurred in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where a young gunman killed 20 children and six adults before killing himself. Another school shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018 left 17 dead and triggered once again a debate about the need to strengthen gun control laws.
In Mexico in 2017, a 15-year-old killed four people at a school before killing himself, and in Brazil in 2019, two teenage gunmen killed eight people at a school in Sao Paulo before killing themselves. There have also been school shootings in countries such as Russia, Germany, and China.
