HELSINKI.-A 12-year-old student shot dead a classmate and wounded two others at a secondary school in southern Finland, according to police. The suspect was later arrested.
Heavily armed police cordoned off the school — a large educational institution that includes middle and high school classes and has about 800 students — in the city of Vantaa, just outside the capital, Helsinki, after receiving a tip about a shooting at 9:08 in the morning.
Police said both the suspect and the victims were 12 years old.
One of the injured children died on the spot and the other two were seriously injured, East Uusima police chief Ilkka Koskimäki said at a press conference.
The weapon used was a pistol registered to a relative of the suspect, he said.
The suspect was arrested later on Tuesday in the Helsinki region with a gun in his possession, they added. He admitted to the shooting during an initial police interview, although his motive was not initially reported, according to police. The case was being investigated as a murder and two attempted murders.
Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Prime Minister Petteri Orpo conveyed their condolences to the families of the victims in posts on X, and both said they were shocked by what happened.
“What makes it especially shocking is the age of the victim and the suspect,” Orpo said at a news conference later Tuesday. “I can assure you that this will be carefully analyzed and conclusions drawn so that this does not happen again.”
The minimum age of legal responsibility in Finland is 15, so the suspect cannot be formally arrested. A suspect under the age of 15 can only make a statement to the police, after which he will be handed over to the Finnish child protection authorities.
Finland has suffered two major school shootings in recent decades.
In November 2007, an 18-year-old student armed with a semi-automatic pistol opened fire on the Jokela secondary school campus in Tuusula, southern Finland, killing nine people. He was found dead with self-inflicted wounds.
Less than a year later, in September 2008, a 22-year-old student shot dead 10 people with a semi-automatic pistol at a vocational school in Kauhajoki, southwestern Finland, before committing suicide.
In the Nordic nation of 5.6 million people there are more than 1.5 million registered firearms and about 430,000 licensed holders, according to the Finnish Ministry of the Interior. Hunting and gun ownership are deep-rooted traditions in the sparsely populated northern European country.
The responsibility for licensing ordinary firearms lies with local police forces.
After the school shootings of 2007 and 2008, Finland tightened its gun laws by raising the minimum age to own a gun and giving police more powers to do background checks on people applying for a license.
Source: With information from AP
