This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/04/world/europe/fatal-shooting-by-student-at-moscow-school.html

The article has changed 8 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 1 Version 2
Student Kills 2 at Moscow School Student Kills 2 at Moscow School
(about 7 hours later)
MOSCOW — A student opened fire in a high school in northern Moscow on Monday, killing a police officer and a teacher and holding two dozen other students hostage before being captured by the police, a spokesman for Russia’s Interior Ministry said. MOSCOW — A student armed with two rifles opened fire in a high school in Moscow on Monday morning, killing a geography teacher and a police officer as he held some two dozen students hostage in a rare case of gun violence in a school here.
The shooting, which occurred at School No. 263 in the Otradnoye neighborhood, forced the evacuation of hundreds of students. Others remained inside the school and another one adjacent to it as the police searched for the gunman. No students were injured. The student, who was identified as Sergey Gordeyev, 15, initially battled police officers responding to the hostage crisis, killing one officer and wounding another, before his father entered the classroom in a bulletproof vest and persuaded him to surrender, the Moscow police chief, Anatoly Yakunin, told reporters.
“The school secretary came in, and she said not to let the children out,” said Maria Shukvina, a ninth grader at the school. “Then I heard a loud bang, and she came back and told us to get our things and get out as quickly as possible.” Maria Shukvina, a ninth-grade student, described huddling in a classroom as gunshots echoed through the school.
The spokesman said at least one other police officer was injured when the student fired from a window of a biology lab, where he had held the hostages. As of Monday afternoon, the identity of the student had not been disclosed, nor had any possible motive. “The school secretary came in, and she said not to let the children out,” Ms. Shukvina later said outside the school, where a police helicopter hovered over the scene even hours after Mr. Gordeyev had surrendered. “Then I heard a loud bang, and she came back and told us to get our things and get out as quickly as possible.”
School shootings are rare in Russia, and the events Monday prompted unnerving comparisons in Russian news accounts to those that have occurred in the United States. Word of the shooting deeply unsettled the residential neighborhood of Otradnoye, where the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee and Internal Ministry flocked to supervise the investigation on Monday as agitated parents and students milled outside in subzero temperatures.
School shootings are rare here and mass shootings are often associated with terrorist attacks, including one at a school in the North Caucasus town of Beslan in 2004 that left more than 330 people dead, most of them children.
The police had not specified a motive in the attack by Monday evening, but Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for the Russia’s Investigative Committee, suggested that Mr. Gordeyev may have suffered an “emotional breakdown.”
Mr. Markin said that Mr. Gordeyev shot the geography teacher, Mr. Kirillov, point-blank.
“They said that Andrey Nikolayevich was lying on the floor with a bullet in the forehead and another in his chest,” Yeva Akhmat, a student at a neighboring school that sheltered students fleeing the violence, said, referring to Mr. Kirillov.
“They said he was still there when they left.”
In a video posted to the news site Lifenews, several students held hostage by Mr. Gordeyev denied that he had any previous conflict with the teacher or other students.
“He said that he wanted to know if there was life after death and came to the school to shoot before he died,” said the student, identified only by her first name, Lusya.
“You could see in his eyes that he was scared.”
A classmate described Mr. Gordeyev as a strong student who seemed aloof.
“I don’t know if he was aggressive, but he was just strange,” said Anton Alifatov, a ninth grader.
“He was quiet but I didn’t think anything more of it.”