A 14-year-old girl shot a fellow pupil dead and wounded five other children on Thursday before killing herself at a school in the Russian city of Bryansk, officials said. “According to preliminary investigation data, a 14-year-old girl brought a pump-action shotgun to school, from which she fired shots at her classmates,” Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a statement. Police are working to establish the motive, and “all available forces are at the scene,” it added. Regional governor Alexander Bogomaz called it a “tragedy.” The wounded were all children with mild or moderate injuries.
Guns are usually tightly controlled in Russia, but the case highlights the potential danger of a generation raised amid war and economic hardship in a country where violence is common. The shooting is also a reminder that the Russian government is facing a wave of anger after a series of police raids targeting activists, opposition politicians, and journalists. In a recent incident, police in Nizhny Novgorod searched the offices of the Tolerance Support Foundation, the city’s human rights group, and Novaya Gazeta, searching for illegal computer programs.
In the past, the government has reacted strongly to public unrest. 1993, it cracked down on mass protests after Boris Yeltsin’s presidential elections. The ensuing violence left hundreds dead and thousands injured, prompting Yeltsin to resign from the post. It has been a turbulent time since then, with Russia at the center of several separatist conflicts.
Last year, an 18-year-old boy killed 20 people at a college in the Russian-occupied Crimea region that Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014. A month later, a man armed with a swastika on his T-shirt killed 15 pupils and a teacher at a school in Izhevsk.
Authorities say the suspect in the Bryansk shooting had written a list of children she wanted to kill and planned her actions well in advance. According to Serbian state news agency RTS, She took a day off from school on Tuesday to visit her father, who works as a shooter at a shooting range. The suspect, identified only as K.K., called police from a school phone minutes after the shooting, according to RTS. The authorities said he was a 13-year-old who would be placed in a psychiatric institution because of his mental health problems.
The investigators said they were still determining whether the shooter had planned to attack other targets as well. They will also look into her relationship with the victim and other suspects and the school’s security policies.
The suspect’s father was detained for questioning. In the wake of the shooting, prosecutors in Belgrade said that the suspect would be placed in a particular psychiatric facility for young offenders, state news agency N1 reported. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said that the suspect, who was wearing a red dress and lipstick, did not show any remorse and appeared to have been under the influence of psychoactive substances.