After renewed rampage in Serbia: suspected shooter arrested

The Serbian police caught the man who is said to have killed eight people near Belgrade and injured several. It’s the second gun attack to rock the country in two days, following a school shooting.

After the fatal shots at eight people in Serbia, investigators arrested a suspect. The police said the man was arrested near the central Serbian city of Kragujevac, about 100 kilometers south of Belgrade.

The police had deployed a large number of people to search for the man who shot people indiscriminately with a rapid-fire weapon near the town of Mladenovac south of Belgrade on Thursday evening, killing eight of them. 13 other people suffered injuries.

Shot randomly out of the car

The suspect apparently got the gun from home during a nightly argument in the schoolyard of his village near Belgrade – his father is a professional soldier. He first shot three people his own age, then fled by car to neighboring villages and continued shooting indiscriminately on the way.

Some of the people who were attacked sat unsuspectingly on a bench in the village square, according to the website of the daily newspaper “Blic”. Relatives gathered in front of the emergency room in Belgrade, where at least eight injured people were admitted, as reported by the N1 television station. Nothing is known about the motives that led to the crime.

Serbia was shaken by a massacre in a Belgrade school on Wednesday. A 13-year-old student had shot eight classmates and a security guard. The police then took him into custody. Because of his age, the perpetrator is not yet of criminal responsibility in Serbia.

President wants to disarm Serbia

As a result of the two attacks, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic announced a large-scale disarmament campaign for the Balkan state. “We will carry out an almost complete disarmament of Serbia,” he said at a press conference.

In an address to the nation, Vucic promised the suspect would never see daylight again. The populist president described the act as a terrorist attack. He announced a series of anti-terrorist measures, including hiring 1,200 police officers and deploying police officers in schools.

700,000 privately owned guns

After the shooting at the school, Vucic had already announced that in future there would be stricter controls on how weapons and ammunition were kept in private households. In addition, no new gun licenses should be issued for two years.

There are about 700,000 legally registered privately owned firearms, handguns, hunting and sporting weapons in Serbia. The private possession of submachine guns and automatic firearms is prohibited. Gun laws are considered sufficiently strict. The problem is illegally owned weapons, some of which date back to the war.

With information from Wolfgang Vichtl, ARD Studio Vienna