In Vantaa, Finland, an armed 12-year-old boy opened fire in his school: one of his peers was killed in the shooting and two other pupils were injured. The 12-year-old then ran away, but police found him and arrested him in the nearby suburb of Siltamaki.
The shooting occurred shortly after 9 am (8 am Italian time) today, Tuesday 2 April. Classes had just resumed after the long Easter holiday weekend.
At the moment, not many details are known about the incident. The arrested child was found in possession of a weapon, but the police did not report how he came into possession of it, nor did they specify what type of weapon it was.
Anja Hietamies, mother of an 11-year-old student, told the Reuters that he received a text from his daughter after the shooting. “She said they were in a dark, locked classroom, they couldn't talk on the phone but they could send messages.”
Finnish Interior Minister Mari Rantanen wrote on The suspected culprit has been captured.”
The school where the shooting occurred has around 800 students aged 7 to 15 divided into two sites and has around ninety employees. With its 240 thousand inhabitants, Vantaa is the fourth largest city in Finland and is about fifteen kilometers from the capital Helsinki.
The memory of is still alive in the country two shootings at school occurred in 2007 and 2008. In the first case an 18-year-old student killed seven pupils and the principal in the city of Tuusula, in the second case another student caused the death of nine pupils and a teacher in the city of Kauhajoki.
After those episodes, Finnish gun laws were tightened, but there are still 430,000 regular gun owners out of a population of 5.5 million. There is no limit to the number of guns you can own and the Home Office says there are more than 1.5 million in circulation.
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