A student gunman shot and killed 10 people at a vocational
school in western Finland before turning the gun on himself, in the
country's second such attack in less than a year.
The gunman, 22-year old student Matti Saari, died later of a head
wound in Tampere University Hospital, the hospital's medical
director said.
In an echo of last year's deadly attack at Finland's Jokela high
school, Saari posted menacing comments and videos of himself
wielding a gun on the Internet in the run-up to his shooting
rampage, prompting police to question him.
"A cold-blooded shooter entered the building with an automatic
pistol and started cutting down students," said Jukka Forsberg, a
maintenance man at the school in the town of Kauhajoki where the
shooting occurred.
"He also shot towards me, did not say anything and once the bullets
started to whizz by I started running for my life."
Many of the students at the post-secondary school, which teaches
catering and tourism studies, are around 20 years old.
Police interviewed Saari regarding the shooting video a day before
the massacre, Interior Minister Anne Holmlund told a news
conference. They were alerted to footage posted on the Web showing
him firing a handgun at a shooting range.
"Police action will be examined in more detail later. The gunman
had a temporary permit for a .22 calibre pistol, and he had
received it in August 2008. It was his first gun," she said.
Gun ownership in Finland is among the highest in the world, but
crime rates in general are low.
Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen said Finland should consider banning
private handguns altogether, saying a new stricter European-wide
gun law was not enough.
"It is not enough to talk about age limits or interviews ... after
two such tragic incidents, we have to discuss whether private
people can be allowed to have handguns," Vanhanen said.
Tragic day
The Internet link revived memories of last year's deadly attack at
Jokela high school, where student Pekka-Eric Auvinen killed six
fellow students, the school nurse and the principal after
broadcasting his intent in a YouTube video.
Auvinen shot himself and died later of his injuries.
"We have experienced a tragic day," Vanhanen said in Helsinki after
the Kauhajoki attack.
The Finnish government said grief counsellors were on site and
giving support to students, teachers and relatives.
"This is very very depressing. We have only had some time since the
Jokela case last November," said rescue coordinator Kari
Saarinen.
A search of YouTube and the wider Internet yielded a number of
videos filmed by a user called "Mr. Saari", who said he was 22
years old and lived in Kauhajoki. The videos show a man clad in
black or dark colours, firing a handgun at a shooting range.
The YouTube user's profile included the words: "And suddenly there
was war and the mothers they screamed. For revenge and reprisals
for another war."
It adds: "Whole life is war and whole life is pain. And you will
fight alone in your personal war. War. This is war!"
In one video, entitled "Goodbye", the dark-clad man empties his
gun into an off-screen target, walks to the camera and says
"goodbye".
But according to a former classmate, the travel and restaurant
trade student bore no resemblance to the loner profile of many mass
murderers.
"He was happy, a social guy - there was nothing exceptional - he
got along with people well and he was not lonely. He had friends"
and was easy to talk to, said Susanna Keronen, trying to fathom
what might have led him to take such drastic action.
In his profile on the irc-gallery social networking site, Saari,
who lived alone with his cat, billed himself as a committed
misanthrope. Other entries touted war and revenge.
Saari's postings were strikingly similar to those of Jokela high
school student Pekka-Eric Auvinen, who shot dead six fellow
students, the principal and the school nurse last November after
posting a video telegraphing his plans.
A raft of copy-cat videos after the Jokela shooting led to closer
monitoring of sites by police.
Saari and Auvinen, who shared a love of the industrial rock band
KMFDM, both spent their last hours on the Internet.
Just like Auvinen, Saari logged on to the Internet site irc-gallery
on Wednesday morning for the last time before leaving for school
and opening fire on his classmates.
Saari, who said he was an atheist, said on myspace.com he was
interested in meeting friends and networking. But on other sites,
he mulled the final solution to the problems of mankind and aired
darker thoughts.
On various sites, the horror movie fan listed computers, guns, sex,
beer and drums among his hobbies, and under favourite musicians
named only heavy metal bands.
He posted a picture of his gun - a Walther P22 Target pistol - on
the Internet, and mentioned it on a dating site.
Saari wrote that he was looking for a woman but did not want
children.
Local authorities said students and staff had been evacuated from
the school and that an earlier fire had been extinguished.
The school, which calls itself the "Kauhajoki School of
Hospitality", had 150 students and 40 teachers as of 2005,
according to the official website.
Finland ranks third after the United States and Yemen in gun
ownership rates, according to a study last year by the Geneva-based
Graduate Institute of International Studies.