A 12-year-old boy who shot and killed a fellow pupil at a Finland school has explained that he was a target of bullying, and this was the motive for his attack.
The boy on Tuesday brought a relative's revolver to the Viertola school near Helsinki and shot three 12-year-olds and threatened several others.
The pupil, who has not been named by authorities, transferred to the school at the start of the year.
A national day of mourning has taken place today, Wednesday, with flags being lowered to half-mast.
The school in Finland where the shooting took place
Reuters
Lead investigator Detective Chief Inspector Marko Sarkka said: "We just found out today that there was this bullying behind the tragedy."
The preliminary police probe had confirmed that the boy was a target of bullying, investigators said in a separate statement. Sarkka declined to elaborate on these claims.
It is not clear whether the attacker sought to target any specific individuals.
According to a 2023 study by public health institute THL, Finland has seen a rising level of bullying in schools, with 8.6 per cent of pupils who are now around 12 years old saying they had been targeted at least once a week, up from 7.2 per cent in 2019.
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Tributes were left at the scene in Helsinki
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Finnish police confirmed that the permit for the revolver used in Wednesday's attack belonged to a relative of the suspect. It was not immediately clear how the shooter had obtained the weapon.
Detectives said: "This matter is being investigated by the police as a separate firearms offence."
After word spread of the shooting on Tuesday morning, anxious parents waited for hours outside the school as teachers kept classroom doors shut to protect their pupils while police officers searched the premises.
The suspect was eventually apprehended around four kilometres away while still in possession of a gun.
Members of the Finnish parliament pay their respect to the victims of the school shooting that happened at Viertola school in Vantaa
Reuters
There were no other suspects, police said. The victims have not been identified apart from saying they were all 12-year-old pupils at the school and that the suspect was a boy.
One of the injured children was a girl from Kosovo, the Kosovo foreign ministry said in a post on Facebook.
Following deadly school shootings in 2007 and 2008, Finland tightened its gun legislation in 2010 and introduced an aptitude test for all firearms licence applicants. The minimum age for applicants was also raised from 18 to 20.
There are more than 1.5 million licensed firearms and about 430,000 licence holders in the country of 5.6 million people, where hunting and target shooting are popular.
