“She said they were in a dark, locked classroom, not allowed to speak on the phone but could send messages,” Hietamies said, adding her daughter was scared.
Interior minister Mari Rantanen said on X: “The day started in a horrifying way. I can only imagine the pain and worry many families are experiencing. The suspected perpetrator has been caught.”
Prime minister Petteri Orpo said the shooting was shocking.
“My thoughts are with the victims, their loved ones and the other pupils and staff,” he said on X.
Previous school shootings in Finland have put a harsh focus on Finland's gun policy.
In 2007, Pekka-Eric Auvinen shot dead six pupils, the school nurse, the principal and himself using a handgun at Jokela High School near Helsinki.
A year later, in 2008, Matti Saari, another pupil, opened fire at a vocational school in Kauhajoki, in northwest Finland. He killed nine pupils and one male staff member before turning the gun on himself. Finland tightened its gun legislation in 2010, introducing an aptitude test for all firearms licence applicants. The minimum age for applicants was also changed to 20 from 18.
There are more than 1.5-million licensed firearms and about 430,000 licence holders in the nation of 5.6-million people, where hunting and target shooting are popular.
Reuters
One dead, two wounded in Finland school shooting, 12-year-old suspect held
One child was killed and two others seriously wounded in a shooting at a school outside the Finnish capital Helsinki on Tuesday, police said, with a 12-year-old fellow pupil suspected of the attack taken into custody.
At the school, a building had been cordoned off by police. Parents were picking up their children from another school building hundreds of metres away.
The arrest happened peacefully in the suburb of Siltamaki, away from the school. The suspect and the weapon were in police custody. There were no other suspects for now, police said. They provided no details of the identity of the suspect or victims, apart from saying they were all 12-year-old Finns and pupils at the school.
The suspect, who had not had the chance to make a plea, admitted the attack in a preliminary interview, police said. The suspect will be put in the care of social services and is too young to be remanded.
Police said the motive was not clear. The permit for the handgun belonged to a relative of the suspect, they said.
Video circulating on social media and unverified by Reuters showed two police kneeling at the side of the suspected shooter who was lying face down on a pavement.
The shooting took place at the Viertola school in Vantaa, a suburb of Helsinki, which has about 800 pupils from grade 1 to 9 and a staff of 90, according to the municipality.
Anja Hietamies, the mother of an 11-year-old pupil, told Reuters she received a message from her daughter after the shooting.
“She said they were in a dark, locked classroom, not allowed to speak on the phone but could send messages,” Hietamies said, adding her daughter was scared.
Interior minister Mari Rantanen said on X: “The day started in a horrifying way. I can only imagine the pain and worry many families are experiencing. The suspected perpetrator has been caught.”
Prime minister Petteri Orpo said the shooting was shocking.
“My thoughts are with the victims, their loved ones and the other pupils and staff,” he said on X.
Previous school shootings in Finland have put a harsh focus on Finland's gun policy.
In 2007, Pekka-Eric Auvinen shot dead six pupils, the school nurse, the principal and himself using a handgun at Jokela High School near Helsinki.
A year later, in 2008, Matti Saari, another pupil, opened fire at a vocational school in Kauhajoki, in northwest Finland. He killed nine pupils and one male staff member before turning the gun on himself. Finland tightened its gun legislation in 2010, introducing an aptitude test for all firearms licence applicants. The minimum age for applicants was also changed to 20 from 18.
There are more than 1.5-million licensed firearms and about 430,000 licence holders in the nation of 5.6-million people, where hunting and target shooting are popular.
Reuters
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