Finnish Police Says Thunder Mound for School Attack

A 12-year-old boy who shot a sixth-grader to death and seriously injured two students, including a girl from Kosovo at an elementary school in Finland, was a target of thunderism, and that is what prompted her to carry out the attack, Finnish police said Wednesday.

Police said he took a relative's gun to the “Viertola” elementary school near Helsinki and shot three 12-year-old students and threatened several others.

He had moved to this school early in 2024, investigators said.

Police said one of the injured girls has dual, Kosovo and Finnish citizenship. She said the two seriously injured girls are still being treated at the hospital.

In a media communiqué on Wednesday, Finnish police said the alleged Finnish citizen, prime minister, was questioned Tuesday and “has accepted the execution of the act”.

On Tuesday, the Kosovo Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Diaspora confirmed that an Albanian girl from Kosovo is one of those injured in the attack on the “Viertola” school in Finland.

She gave no further details, but said the Kosovo Republic Embassy in Stockholm is in constant contact with the girl's family.

Finland held national mourning days Wednesday in honour of the child killed in the attack.

“Today we discovered that behind this tragedy lies the lynx1>, the head of the investigation, Detective Marko Sarkka, told Reuters.

He didn't give any more details, or if the attacker had any assigned students to target.

School violence rates in Finland have increased, with 8.6 percent of students about 12 years old now saying they have been a target of thunder at least once a week.

This is an increase of over one percent from 2019, when the rate was 7.2 percent, according to a 2023 study by the public health institute, THL.

The school where the attack took place has about 800 students from first class to ninth, as well as a staff of 90 people, according to local authorities.

Finland has faced such incidents in the past as well.

In 2007, Pekka-Erica Auvinen had killed seven students, the school nurse, the director and himself with a handgun in high school “Jokela”, near Helsinki.

A year later, in 2008, Matti Saari, another student, had shot at a professional school in northwest Finland. He killed nine students, one member of the school staff and then himself.

Finland has exacerbated the weapons law in 2010. It has also changed the age allowed for weapons from 18 to 20. / REL