BELGRADE, May 5 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Police arrested a suspected gunman responsible for killing eight people and injuring 13 others, state media reported early Friday, following an hours-long manhunt throughout the night in the country’s second mass shooting this week.
“RTS learned the murderer was arrested near Kragujevac,” the state-run television channel said, referring to a city in central Serbia.
The attacker earlier shot randomly at people near the town of Mladenovac, some 50 kilometers south of the capital, the RTS report said. Police were looking for a 21-year-old suspect who fled after the attack, the report said.
The shooting came a day after a 13-year-old boy used his father’s guns in a rampage at a school in Belgrade that killed eight of his fellow students and a school guard.
The bloodshed sent shockwaves through a Balkan nation unused to mass murders.
Though Serbia is awash with weapons left over from the wars of the 1990s, mass shootings are extremely rare. Wednesday’s school shooting was the first in the country’s modern history. The last mass shooting before this week was in 2013, when a war veteran killed 13 people in a central Serbian village.
Serbian Interior Minister Bratislav Gasic called Thursday’s shooting “a terrorist act,” state media reported.
Special police and helicopter units have been sent to the region as well as ambulances, it added.
No other details were immediately available, and police had not issued any statements.
Earlier Thursday, Serbian students, many wearing black and carrying flowers, filled streets around the school in central Belgrade as they paid silent homage to peers killed a day earlier. Thousands lined up to lay flowers, light candles and leave toys to commemorate the nine people who were killed on Wednesday morning.
The children killed Wednesday were seven girls and one boy. One of the girls was a French citizen, France’s foreign ministry said.
Authorities have said that the shooter Kosta Kecmanovic is too young to be charged and tried. He has been placed in a mental institution, while his father has been detained on suspicion of endangering public security because his son got hold of the guns. — NNN-AGENCIES
