15 injured in Columbine-inspired knife attack at Russian school
Fifteen people have been injured in Russia after two teenagers inspired by the Columbine massacre stabbed younger children and a teacher.
The teacher and the two attackers aged 15 and 16 were in critical condition on Monday in Perm, a city of a million people near the Ural Mountains, according to the governor's office.
Footage from the scene showed police leading a bloodied, shirtless teenager away from the school in handcuffs, as well as blood splattered across the floor of a classroom.
Russia's investigative committee said the bloodshed had occurred when the teacher and her pupils tried to break up a knife fight between a current student and his former classmate.
Other accounts, however, said the incident began as an attack on the school. The regional children's ombudswoman told Perm news site 59.ru that security had failed to catch the two teenagers, who climbed to a fourth-grade class on the third floor with knives. At that point, a fight broke out between the two attackers, and the teacher and students “were drawn into the conflict,” she said.
Mash, a popular news channel on the Telegram messenger app, quoted witnesses as saying the attackers had targeted the teacher.
“Two older students dressed in black burst in, went up to the teacher and started to stab her with knives,” a student told Mash.
Although the authorities did not name the pair, several Russian media and eyewitnesses identified them. The interior ministry said one of the suspects was registered at a local psychiatric facility.
Deputy education minister Olga Golodets said security in schools would be strengthened.
At least one of the alleged attackers appeared to reference the 1999 shooting at Columbine high school in Colorado, which left 14 students and one teacher dead, on social media.
An account on the Russian social network VK with a name, location and age matching one of the suspects had posted videos of American high school shooters, including Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Several videos mixed footage of Harris and Klebold shooting guns in the woods and attacking their high school with Foster the People's 2011 song about school shootings, Pumped Up Kicks.
The user also belonged to a group called “(school)shooters,” which had a profile picture of Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who shot to death nine black worshippers at a church in Charleston, South Carolina.
A VK account under the name of the other suspect featured a drawing with the title Slender Man, the name of an Internet meme connected the stabbing of a 12-year-old girl in Wisconsin in 2014.
In September, a 15-year-old attacked a teacher at his school outside Moscow with a hatchet and a traumatic pistol, a non-lethal pistol that can be also used as flare gun or starting pistol The name listed on his social media accounts was “Mike Klebold” in reference to the Columbine shooter.
