At school in central Russia, a Swastika-wearing gunman kills at least 17 before ending own life

[Brexiter]

A gunman with a swastika on his shirt killed 17 people—including 11 children and six adults—and wounded more than 20 others before killing himself at a school in a city in central Russia that he once attended, according to Russia’s national Investigative Committee.


Russia’s Investigative Committee said the gunman was wearing a black T-shirt bearing “Nazi symbols,” The Washington Post reported. No details about his motives have been released. But so far no one has suggested any link between the school shooting and the war in Ukraine.


Reuters:

The attacker, a man in his early thirties who was named by authorities as Artyom Kazantsev, killed two security guards and then opened fire on students and teachers at School Number 88 in Izhevsk, where he had once been a pupil.

Russia's Investigative Committee, which handles major crimes, said it was looking into the perpetrator's suspected neo-Nazi links.
"Currently investigators...are conducting a search of his residence and studying the personality of the attacker, his views and surrounding milieu," the committee said in a statement. "Checks are being made into his adherence to neo-fascist views and Nazi ideology."

Izhevsk, a city of 640,000, is located 600 miles east of Moscow in the Udmurtia region. School No. 88 has students from grades 1 through 11.


Kazantsev had been under psychiatric care, Alexander Brechalov, head of the Udmurt Region, told reporters on Monday, according to the official TASS news agency.

A subsequent TASS report said the gunman had been diagnosed with schizophrenia.

"Artyom Kazantsev, who opened fire at a school in Izhevsk, was earlier diagnosed with schizophrenia," Russian Education Minister Sergey Kravtsov said, as follows from a post uploaded to the Education Ministry’s Telegram channel.

Video from the scene:

YouTube Video


The official RIA Novosti news agency was told of the casualties. Authorities told RIA Novosti that the shooter was armed with two non-lethal pistols that had been converted to use live ammunition.

Earlier Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporter during a phone call:
“President Putin deeply mourns the deaths of people, children at a school where there was a terrorist attack by a person, who apparently belongs to a neo-fascist group. The president wishes for the recovery of those injured as a result of this inhuman terrorist attack.”
Peskov made his remarks before certain details about the gunman were revealed. Both TASS and RIA Novosti did not refer to Peskov’s remarks in their reports.


In the past three years, there have been at least 13 mass shootings in Russia, including a school shooting in Kazan in May 2021 that resulted in nine deaths, according to The New York Times.

CNN:

Putin responded to the attack in Kazan by calling for new gun control measures, which became law in June 2021. Peskov said Monday that authorities would take another look at just how effective those regulations were in light of the most recent shooting.

Russia has in recent years seen rising concerns that copycat criminals in the country could attempt the type of massacres that have plagued schools in the United States.

Those fears were particularly acute in the aftermath of the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, in which 17 people were killed. The month before Parkland, three school attacks were reported throughout Russia. The teenage perpetrators in those incidents used air guns and knives, not semi-automatic weapons, and the victims suffered injuries, with no deaths reported, according to state media.

And incidentally, according to CNN, Izhevsk is a prominent industrial center best known as the home of the AK-47 rifle and the longtime residence of the Soviet lieutenant general credited with its development, Mikhail Kalashnikov.

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to reflect new information about casualties.

Monday, Sep 26, 2022 · 11:31:35 PM +00:00 · Charles Jay

The scene outside the school was eerily familiar to the aftermath of mass school shootings in the U.S.

A video released by The Associated Press showed children running ut of the school as ambulances arrived to carry off the victims. Anxious parents waited outside the school.


YouTube Video



Katya Stepanova, an 8th grade student, said, “We were hiding under the school desk and sitting quietly. Everyone’s legs were shaking.

Olga Stepanova. identified as a mother, said, “I think it took too long for the police to come. I managed to get to the school from work, and police had just arrived. They stated evacuating them step-by step. they were carrying a lot of injured children in front of us.”

Monday, Sep 26, 2022 · 11:43:28 PM +00:00 · Charles Jay

The Washington Post added additional details from local media reports in Russia.

The gunman, clad in black pants, black jacket, the swastika T-shirt and a black balaclava, shot the school security guard before walking into the school and opening fire on children, many of them as young as 7 years old, according local media accounts.

Panic-stricken children fled the school during the attack, as police with pistols raised rushed up stairwells and along school corridors, according to video aired by independent local media.

Children huddled silently with their teachers in classrooms, according to videos published by local media. In another video, shots could be heard as the children and staff hid.


A seventh-grade boy at the school jumped from a third-floor window to escape the shooting and broke his leg, Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets reported.

Ammunition magazines piled on a desk next to the gunman’s body in images published by local media bore the word “hatred” in red paint. Two pistols near his body had braided cords with the words Columbine, Dylan and Eric, a reference to the 1999 Columbine school massacre in the U.S. in which 13 people were killed by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.