The motive for the school shooting at the Jokiranta branch of the Viertola school in Vantaa on Tuesday morning has been confirmed to be bullying, the Eastern Uusimaa Police Department noted in a statement.
The suspect, a 12-year-old boy, had also shouted about bullying during the shooting in his classroom of sixth-graders (according to MTV News), in which two girls of the same age were seriously injured and a boy died at the scene. One of the girls was identified by the Kosovo Foreign Ministry as Albanian.
The shooter was wearing ear protection and, according to the police, “some kind of scarf.”
After shooting three people, the suspect fled the scene.
The suspect had recently moved from a small town of a few thousand people in the Uusimaa region to Helsinki, according to recent media reports.
The shooting appears to have been premeditated, according to police.
“The preliminary investigation has revealed facts that suggest that the act was planned. Searches of devices seized from the suspect’s possession, such as a telephone and a computer, have revealed material that supports this view,” Marko Särkkä, a detective inspector at the Eastern Uusimaa Police Department, said in a statement.
After the shooting began, other students were locked in classrooms awaiting instructions from authorities. The pupils remained locked in their classrooms for hours.
Outside, after hearing a gunshot near the school in the nearby dog park, a Vantaa resident looked in the direction of the loud bang and noticed a young boy approaching with a hood over his head and a gun in his left hand. The idea that the boy was carrying a toy gun was abandoned when the boy shouted: “Don’t look, just keep walking!”
