Scott
11-07-2007, 11:31 AM
TUUSULA, Finland - An 18-year-old gunman killed eight people at a high school in southern Finland on Wednesday, then shot himself but survived, police said. The attack came hours after a video was posted on YouTube predicting a school massacre.
Police said the gunman, reportedly a student at Jokela High School, was being treated at a local hospital.
"Five boys, two girls and one adult woman were killed," Police Chief Matti Tohkanen told a news conference, later identifying the woman as the principal of the school in the Tuusula municipality, some 40 miles from the Finnish capital Helsinki.
The YouTube video, set to hard-driving music, shows a still photo of a school that appears to be the school. The photo then fragments to reveal a red-tinted picture of a man pointing a gun at the camera. The video was apparently later removed from the site.
?It felt unreal?
"He (the gunman) was moving systematically through the school hallways, knocking on the doors and shooting through the doors," Kim Kiuru, a teacher at the school, said at the scene.
"It felt unreal, a pupil I have taught myself was running toward me, screaming, a pistol in his hand," Kiuru said.
The YouTube video was entitled "Jokela High School Massacre ? 11/7/2007" and was posted by a user called Sturmgeist89. "Sturmgeist" means storm spirit in German.
Police surrounded the school and a city official announced shortly before 9 a.m. ET that the siege was over.
Junior Constable Olli Laine said police surrounded the building, which houses both a middle school and high school, and had evacuated students.
Kiuru, who was teaching a grade 8 class when the shooting started, said he helped his pupils escape the building through the classroom windows.
Violence rare at Finnish schools
Despite having the third-largest per capita ratio of handgun ownership in the world, violent incidents are rare at Finnish schools.
According to Finnish media, there have been four stabbings at schools since 1999. None of these caused fatalities.
The last major attack in the country came in 2002 when a young man killed himself and six others in a bomb blast at a shopping mall in Helsinki.
link (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21669167/)
damm that sucks
Police said the gunman, reportedly a student at Jokela High School, was being treated at a local hospital.
"Five boys, two girls and one adult woman were killed," Police Chief Matti Tohkanen told a news conference, later identifying the woman as the principal of the school in the Tuusula municipality, some 40 miles from the Finnish capital Helsinki.
The YouTube video, set to hard-driving music, shows a still photo of a school that appears to be the school. The photo then fragments to reveal a red-tinted picture of a man pointing a gun at the camera. The video was apparently later removed from the site.
?It felt unreal?
"He (the gunman) was moving systematically through the school hallways, knocking on the doors and shooting through the doors," Kim Kiuru, a teacher at the school, said at the scene.
"It felt unreal, a pupil I have taught myself was running toward me, screaming, a pistol in his hand," Kiuru said.
The YouTube video was entitled "Jokela High School Massacre ? 11/7/2007" and was posted by a user called Sturmgeist89. "Sturmgeist" means storm spirit in German.
Police surrounded the school and a city official announced shortly before 9 a.m. ET that the siege was over.
Junior Constable Olli Laine said police surrounded the building, which houses both a middle school and high school, and had evacuated students.
Kiuru, who was teaching a grade 8 class when the shooting started, said he helped his pupils escape the building through the classroom windows.
Violence rare at Finnish schools
Despite having the third-largest per capita ratio of handgun ownership in the world, violent incidents are rare at Finnish schools.
According to Finnish media, there have been four stabbings at schools since 1999. None of these caused fatalities.
The last major attack in the country came in 2002 when a young man killed himself and six others in a bomb blast at a shopping mall in Helsinki.
link (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21669167/)
damm that sucks