A teenager described as a model student shot a teacher and a police officer dead and took more than 20 of his schoolmates hostage in a classroom yesterday, days before Russia hosts the Winter Olympics under tight security.
The suspect was disarmed and detained about an hour after the shootings after talking to his father, the owner of the two rifles with which he forced his way into the school in Moscow.
The incident rattled nerves in a country on high alert for Islamist militant violence as athletes and spectators arrive for the Sochi Games, a prestige project that will help shape President Vladimir Putin’s legacy.
Student killed a teacher and a police officer
Putin, who says young Russians are suffering from a moral vacuum left by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, said the attack might have been avoided with better cultural education.
It is almost unheard-of for a student to attack a school in Russia. Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said the Moscow student may have suffered an “emotional breakdown”.
The attacker knocked on the door of the 10th grade class about five minutes after the start of a lesson, his classmate Ivan Chekanov, one of the students who was held hostage, said yesterday.
“We were glad to see him at first – but then he shot the geology teacher,” Chekanov, 16, said. “He fired the shot, then he got up onto the podium, laid out his rifles and said he had 100 bullets and that he had come to die.”
“[Teacher] Andrei Nikolayevich was dripping with blood, he had fallen but he was still alive,” he said.
“[The attacker] asked us: ‘Why is he still alive? I killed him.’ Everyone was silent.”
“He said, ‘Well, guys, your answer gets a ‘D’, and fired several more shots,” Chekanov said by telephone.
The shooting sent students scurrying into the street in sub-zero temperatures while a police helicopter landed in a snow-covered field outside and six ambulances rolled up to the scene.
Officials said the assailant had also shot a policeman responding to the incident, who died in hospital, and that another policeman had been wounded.
The incident began around noon when the attacker cocked a gun at a guard who tried to stop him entering the school, the Federal Investigative Committee said.
It said the guard had managed to press an alarm button, bringing police to the school.
“When the police entered, the shooter opened fire at them, wounding one and killing another.”
Markin said the assailant fired at least 11 shots.
His father was brought in and spent 15 minutes talking to his son by phone before being given a bulletproof vest and going into the classroom. His son began releasing students 30 minutes later, Moscow police chief Anatoly Yakunin said. “Once all the students were released and he was alone with his father, special forces... seized the moment and the 10th grader was neutralised and detained,” Yakunin said.
A former classmate, Sakho-budin Tagoyev, said the alleged attacker was a model student.
“The teachers liked and respected him,” Tagoyev said in an exchange with Reuters online. “He was like Einstein.” But Tagoyev also said the alleged attacker was quick to get nervous.