A seven-year-old pupil was killed and many others were injured in a stabbing attack in a school in the Croatian capital Zagreba 19-year-old man was arrested as a suspect, authorities said. Parents And students they expressed shock and anger and the police sealed the Precko elementary school after the attack, which is believed to be the first school atrocity of its kind in Balkan country.
The Minister of Health Irena Hrstic declared to journalists: «In total six people were injured, of which unfortunately one child he died at the scene after intensive efforts to resuscitate him.” “The deceased child is seven years old,” he added. The Minister of the Interior Davor Bozinovic said the suspect is a 19-year-old former student of the school.
After the attack, the suspect fled and hid in a nearby health center, where he attempted to commit suicide with a knife and was arrested by the police, the minister added. The suspect has a history of mental disorders and a year ago he attempted suicide, he said Bozinovic. The minister said a preliminary investigation indicated that the attack occurred in a hallway of the school, not in a classroom.
THE parentsquoted by the state broadcaster HRTthey said that the pupils had just finished breakfast at school when they saw a young man beating a boy and then panic broke out. “I learned from my sister that there was no one at the entrance and that the attacker entered, breaking into a first grade classroom and then a fifth grade classroom,” she said Philip14, outside school, referring to his sister, who is in first grade. Philip – who attends school in the afternoon – said other first graders leaving the scene were “speechless with shock.” Others called for more security after the attack.
«We are shocked, like all Croatian public opinion, by thehorrible tragedy occurred in primary school”, declared the prime minister Andrei Plenkovic at the start of a cabinet meeting. The mayor of Zagreb Tomislav Tomasevic and the Minister of Education Radovan Fuchs they rushed to the school after the attack. Around noon, about a dozen police cars with their lights on were parked in front of the school.
The area has been isolated and the experts of scientific they were collecting evidence in the schoolyard.
Attacks of this kind are rare in Croatia. In July, a gunman killed six people in one retirement home to Daruvarin eastern Croatia, in an attack that shocked the Balkan country.
Last year the neighbor Serbia was shaken by a series of mass shootingsincluding a massacre in a school in the capital Belgrade in which 10 people were killed. The Croatian authorities have called a day of national mourning for Saturday.