A gunman reportedly opened fire at a school in Central Russia Monday, killing 15 people and injuring 24, before fatally turning the gun on himself. Eleven of the deceased victims were children, as were 22 of the injured, according to local authorities.
Russia’s Investigative Committee identified the gunman as Artyom Kazantsev, a 34-year-old graduate of School No.88 in Izhevsk, the same school where the shooting took place. Izhevsk is located 600 miles east of Moscow. The city has a population of around 640,000.
The school is for children in grades one to 11 and has since been evacuated. According to Russia’s National Guard, the gunman reportedly used two “non-lethal handguns adapted to fire real bullets.”
Kazantsev entered the school and shot the security guard first before beginning his assault on the students. The news outlet Moskovsky Komsomolets reported that a seventh-grade boy jumped from a three-story window to escape, breaking his leg during the fall.
The shooter’s motives are still unknown, but during the assault, he was reportedly wearing a T-shirt with “Nazi symbols.” Images taken by local news media show two pistols next to the gunman’s body, with braided cords bearing the words “Columbine,” “Dylan,” and “Eric,” referencing the 1999 Columbine school shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who killed 13 people.
The images also showed ammunition magazines on a desk near the body, with the word “Hatred” painted in red letters.
Izhevsk is in the Udmurtia region; Udmurtia’s governor, Alexander Brechalov, stated that the gunman was a patient in a psychiatric facility.
Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, called the incident “a terrorist attack” and said that “President Putin deeply mourns the deaths of people and children in the school.”
The shooting does not appear to be connected with Vladimir Putin’s partial military mobilization, which has prompted public protests throughout the country.
This incident marks the third school shooting in Russia since May of last year. Russia’s worst school shooting occurred in 2018 when a gunman killed 21 and injured 67 others at Kerch Polytechnic College.
