New threats are keeping Serbia on edge. After last week’s shootings, police are now detaining those who are threatening to commit murders in the country. Meanwhile, the Interior Ministry is collecting illegally held weapons from the population. The police are collecting illegally held guns, ammunition, bombs and grenades.
After last week’s shooting, young people have returned to schools, but after 3 May, nothing will be the same. The state has given a response to the events and the palpable tension in the society. The government decided to strengthen the protection of the schools, which are now guarded by police officers. Teaching is suspended only in the Vladislav Ribnikar Primary School, where the tragic attack committed by a 7th grader took place. The student murdered 8 of his schoolmates and a security guard and seriously wounded several others.
Life is slowly returning to normal also in Mladenovac, but the whole town is in mourning after another killing spree. There, the ruthless assailant killed eight people. The victims’ families are mourning the dead, while their friends and other residents fear that another similar attack could happen claiming the lives of their loved ones. In the past week, a total of 17 people have been murdered in the two attacks in the Balkan country.
Of the 21 people injured in the two shootings, 5 are still in serious condition, Serbia’s Minister of Health Danica Grujicic told Serbian Pink TV channel.
The 13-year old boy, who killed eight peers and a guard at the Vladislav Ribnikar Primary School with his father’s gun, shows no remorse even today, six days after the rampage, the Serbian B92 portal reports. Kosta K. is currently in isolation at a neuropsychiatry institute in Belgrade. He is said to be completely calm and keeps asking only two questions: “When do I get out of here?” and “What are the reactions to what I did?”.
Meanwhile, tension is still high in Serbia. Schools are receiving further threats. Following last week’s events, police have questioned a 16 and a 17-year-old boy in Pozega for allegedly recording and sharing a video online in which they claimed that they would kill the students of a local school.
In Subotica, a student of the Svetozar Markovic Secondary School was detained by the police for allegedly creating accounts on the internet under the names of mass murderers and researching bomb-making methods online, according to the local news portal subotica.com. The minor was brought to the attention of local authorities by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
In another case, a 22-year-old man was arrested for threatening that the next shooting will take place in Sremska Mitrovica in Vojvodina.
The state is doing everything to guarantee the students’ safety in educational institutions. Police officers have been deployed in schools, and in the month ahead, people will have the right to hand over their illegally held weapons to the Interior Ministry without any consequences.
Several people have already taken the opportunity to turn in their weapons. So far, the police have collected 1 500 weapons, 50 000 rounds of ammunition, 100 bombs and even a portable armour-piercing RPG. In total, this is more than the amount collected in previous campaigns.
V4NA
