BELGRADE -- Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said a teenage boy accused of killing eight fellow students and a security guard at a school in Belgrade will be placed in a psychiatric clinic in the Serbian capital.
Vucic opened a news conference on May 3 by expressing his condolences and holding a minute of silence for the victims, describing the day as one of the most difficult in the modern history of Serbia.
"We cannot return the children to their parents, but we must seek to look at the causes, to look at the responsibility of each of us, to look for solutions so that something like this, no matter how unpredictable, unexpected, never happens again,"Vucic said.
Several other children and one teacher were wounded in the shooting spree at Vladislav Ribnikar elementary school, the Interior Ministry said earlier. Elementary schools in Serbia have eight grades, starting with first grade.
After nightfall, people gathered outside the school to pay their respects to the victims. Some lit candles and left flowers and notes as three days of mourning got under way in the Balkan country, where gun laws are strict and mass shootings are very rare.
The suspect, a seventh-grader identified only by the initials K.K., was arrested at the scene after he allegedly fired several shots at the school using a firearm owned by his father. The boy's age was originally given as 14, but authorities later said he was 13.
Vucic said that the teenager's mother and father had been arrested.
He also announced proposals to change legislation regarding the possession of weapons and suggested that it should be illegal to allow minors to obtain firearms and to train minors to handle weapons.
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Police And Ambulances At Scene Of Belgrade Mass Shooting
Police said a call was first received about the incident around 8:40 a.m. local time.
Belgrade police chief Veselin Milic told a news conference that the suspect had planned the attack for a month, compiling a list of students he planned to kill and drawing a map of the school.
The suspect used two pistols in the attack and had also brought four Molotov cocktails to the school, Milic said.
Milan Nedeljkovic, the head of Belgrade's downtown municipality of Vracar, where the school is located, told reporters outside the school that the student brought the gins into the school in his backpack and that the shooting occurred in a hallway.
Nedeljkovic said the school has security cameras but no metal detectors.
"It was terrible," 14-year-old E.M. told RFE/RL after she was evacuated from the school.
"We had physical education, and I was downstairs when I heard continuous shooting, it wasn't just one shot," said E.M., who was met by her mother outside the school.