At least 15 people were killed and 30 others injured when a student opened fire on Thursday at a university in Prague — where startling images captured young people huddled on the scaffolding of a building as they sought cover from the gunman, officials said.
Authorities responded to the shooting around 3 p.m. local time at Charles University’s Faculty of Arts building near the Czech Republic capital’s Old Town, which is a popular tourist destination, the Prague police said.
The police were tipped off earlier in the day that the suspect — named in local media as 24-year-old David Kozák — was headed to Prague from his hometown in the Kladno region to take his own life, Police Chief Martin Vondrasek explained.
The suspect’s father was later found dead, he added.
After initially responding to the shooting, authorities eventually confirmed that the shooter had been “eliminated” but that there were injured and dead victims at the scene.
Why is “eliminated” in scare quotes? It’s obviously a translation to English, or what I assume is a routine word. I don’t think the cops were trying to sound like Jack Reacher in the press statement.
“We have very fresh unconfirmed information from an account on a social network that he was supposedly inspired by one terrorist attack in Russia in the autumn of this year,” Vondrasek told reporters of the suspect, who was a student in the university’s philosophy department.
Yeah, sure blame Russia instead of the philosophy department.
It’s shocking all modern philosophy students don’t go on shooting rampages at this point. They literally teach that there is no difference between Aristotle and Karl Popper.
A Telegram account under Kozák’s name also contained troubling posts like “I hate the world and want to leave as much pain as possible,” which was shared on Dec. 17.
The last post, from Dec. 19, said,
“I have a ringing in my ears … like some kind of f–king fireflies. I wanted to rip my ears out.”
