An 18-year old boy shot to death 8 and wounded 12 in a high school in Jokela, Finland this week. The police found the shooter on the school corridor after he had shot himself in the head with his handgun. He died later in a hospital. One of the killed students was a 25-year old single mother completing her second year of high school. She left behind two children, aged 3 and 5.

As nowadays tends to be the case, the news first spread across the Internet. Some of the immediate commentary took place over IRC, and there’s a thread on Jaiku that documents the unfolding of the events pretty much as they were happening.  One of the comments in the Jaiku thread is a quote from the IRC chat: "there’s a boy on the other [IRC] channel whose younger sister is still over there in the classroom."

Before taking action the shooter posted a total of 89 videos on YouTube, some of them featuring Nazi imagery. The videos have subsequently been taken offline.

Damn it. Someone should have seen what was coming.

Comments

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Janne Jalkanen
November 10th, 2007 at 1:28 am (#)

Someone did.

Nobody believed him.

charlie
November 11th, 2007 at 9:43 am (#)

Jyri,
It was tough seeing what it did to everyone here – heart-wrenching. Folks were beating themselves up over it. I didn’t know he had posted so many videos. I thought it was just one. And there were so many signs that hind-sight make so apparent.
I try to believe that we _have_ stopped this from happening so many times. But, as Finland grows and becomes more like the rest of the world, these things will slip through.
I hope we all realize that this is an aberration and not the norm. But, it’s hard, since all of us know someone who knows someone involved.
Indeed, I feel that this event cut deeper than when the Myyrmäki bomb went off.
Sigh.
Stay safe, dude.
Tchau,
Charlie

nan
September 28th, 2008 at 9:21 am (#)

… A friend of Saari also reported that he had been seeing a psychologist in the months before the shooting,…
QUOTE:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kauhajoki_school_shooting
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?read=103316