jenda's Journals on Buzznet

At about 1pm today my friend got a message from her mom. She told here there had been a shooting at Jokela high, a school in Tuusula (suburb to Helsinki, about 1 hour drive from where I live). The news was shocking to us, not only because that shootings are really rare here (there has only been one school shooting in Finland before, 1989, which resulted in two victims), but because three of my friends go to that school.

An hour later or so, I got to know that my friends were ok. The police suspected that there was 3 victims, the prinicpal and two male students. Later the figured the amount of people killed was 5 or 6. The final number of victims turned out to be 8.

This is now naturally all over the news. The shooter had put up a 'warning video' titled 'Jokela High School Massacre', on youtube yesterday. He had previously uploaded videos of himself testing his new gun and such. He had also posted an explanation of why he was doing this, and something like a testament, somewhere on the internet.

The text he has written is mostly about his anger and hate towards our society and the human race. He says he realized that there isn't anything worth living for, because nothing can be changed and that he feels only contempt towards humans, and that we are a mistake of evolution. He reffers to himself as 'god' and 'dictator', he thinks of himself as above everyone else. According to fellow students, he admires dictators like Hitler and Stalin.

Is Finland, considered a somewhat safe country, going towards an era of violence?

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BREAKING NEWS: Eight killed in school shooting in Jokela, north of Helsinki, gunman in critical condition

Suspected gunman "acted strange in recent days"

Hospital sources have confirmed to Helsingin Sanomat that eight people were killed in a shooting incident at a school in Jokela in the municipality of Tuusula north of Helsinki on Wednesday.
     Five male and two female students at the school lost their lives, as well as the school's head teacher. The shooter, an 18-year-old pupil of the school was armed with a handgun. He was critically injured in the incident and hospital sources say that his prognosis is very poor.
      There were many injuries, resulting from both the gunfire and injuries sustained while escaping.
      Pupils were evacuated to the nearby Perttu School and Jokela Church.

The gunman was seen by local resident Anna-Liisa Vainio, who was coming to the school to meet with her daughter's teacher.
      She said that she saw four pupils lying on the floor of the corridor. At first she thought that some kind of a rescue drill was going on, and then she saw the shooter with a gun in his hand.
      Tuomas Hulkkonen, a member of the graduating class of the upper secondary school, says that he has known the gunman for ten years - since the lower grades. Hulkkonen says that in recent days he had been acting strange, drawing pictures involving firearms. When asked about it, he said that he was joking. He also said that the suspected gunman had shooting as a hobby.
      Hulkkonen says that he last spoke to the suspect on Tuesday. "Pretty hard to digest this equation, when a guy you know does something like this."

A teacher at the school characterised the suspect as a militant radical. He had been interested in both extreme left and extreme right-wing ideas, as well as history and philosophy.

References to an impending attack in Jokela has been found on the Internet.
      In one package a young man is depicted in several photographs with a hand gun wearing a t-shirt with the slogan "Humanity is overrated".
      Similar material was found on line in the wake of the shootings at Virginia Tech in the United States - apparently left by the shooter.
      One video shows a young man shooting at an apple in a forest apparently just a day before the shooting spree in Jokela. The man also took a picture of his SIG Sauer pistol.

In an information package with 21 files there was also a text of more than 1,000 words with the title "Manifesto of a Natural Selector".
      "I cannot say that I am of the same race as this miserable, arrogant and selfish human race. No! I have evolved a step higher", the man writes.
      The text ends with the words "To each what they deserve".
      He had also outlined the planned course of events for Wednesday. The text was last revised on Tuesday at 11:44 PM.
     . Before the shooting he placed a video on the YouTube website with the title "Jokela High School Massacre - 11/7/2007".

The Jokela School Centre at Jyväkuja 13 has an upper-level comprehensive school and an upper level secondary school. Last year the two schools had a combined 480 pupils.
      A crisis centre has been set up to relay news to parents, who are asked to call 09-4172131 for more information.
      The Finnish Red Cross has also set up a hotline for those needing help in dealing with the crisis. The telephone number is 020366266.
      Neither of the numbers should be considered sources for those following news developments in the case.

The government has convened over the shooting, and is scheduled to hold a press conference on the event later in the evening.
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