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Pekka-Eric
AUVINEN
A.K.A.: "The YouTube killer"
Classification: Mass murderer
Characteristics: School shooting
Number of victims: 8
Date of murders:
November 7,
2007
Date of birth: 1989
Victims profile: Five
boys, two girls and the female principal
Method of murder:
Shooting
(.22 calibre pistol)
Location: Tuusula,
Finland
Status:
Shot himself in the head and later died
from his wounds in hospital
Eight people have been killed and at least 10
others injured in a shooting at a school in southern Finland, police
have said.
The gunman shot himself in the head and later died
from his wounds in hospital, officials said.
The shootings took place in Tuusula, some 50km (30
miles) north of the capital, Helsinki.
Finnish police said an 18-year-old man killed five
boys, two girls and the female principal of Jokela High School.
Investigators have reportedly identified the gunman
as Pekka-Eric Auvinen.
A teacher said the gunman, who had posted footage
foreshadowing the massacre on video-sharing website YouTube, was a
student at the school.
Police responded to a call made at 1144 (0944 GMT)
and made contact with the gunman when they arrived at the school 11
minutes later, said Timo Leppala, the officer in charge of the police
operation.
"Police ordered him to surrender, to which he
answered by shooting towards the police," Mr Leppala said.
He described a scene of chaos with students jumping
from school windows and running for shelter as more police arrived.
It is not clear when the gunman shot himself in the
head.
Police said he was armed with a .22 calibre pistol
for which he obtained a license on 19 October. He did not have a
criminal record and "was from an ordinary family," a police spokesman
said.
A Tuusula municipality spokeswoman said the gunman
opened fire during a lesson at Jokela secondary school, which has 400
pupils between 12 and 18.
'Unreal'
Kim Kiuru, a Jokela teacher, said the head teacher
announced over the school public announcement's system just before noon
(1000 GMT) that all students should remain in their classrooms.
"I stayed in the corridor to listen to more
instructions having locked my classroom door," Mr Kiuru told Finland's
YLE radio.
"After that I saw the gunman running with what
appeared to be a small calibre handgun in his hand through the doors
toward me after which I escaped to the corridor downstairs and ran in
the opposite direction."
"It felt unreal - a pupil I have taught myself was
running towards me, screaming, a pistol in his hand."
Mr Kiuru said he saw a woman's body as he fled the
building. He said he then told his students to "jump out of the windows...
and all my pupils were saved".
'My war'
The gunman had posted a video called "Jokela high
school massacre 11/7/2007" on YouTube in the past two weeks.
The video showed a picture of a building by a lake
and photos of him holding a gun.
Going by the username Sturmgeist89, he called himself
a "social Darwinist" who would "eliminate all who I see unfit". "Sturmgeist"
means storm spirit in German.
The video has now been removed from the website.
He had also reportedly posted on another website a
rambling manifesto.
In it he said: "death and killing is not a tragedy...
Not all human lives are important or worth saving."
He wrote that he was acting alone and nobody is to
blame for his actions. "This is my war: one man's war against humanity,
governments and weak-minded masses of the world."
Finland gunman suicide note found
Thursday, 8 November 2007
BBC News
Police in Finland have found a suicide note
written by an 18-year-old student shortly before he went on a gun
rampage at his school and killed eight people.
Pekka-Eric Auvinen said goodbye to his family and
explained his hatred towards society, the police said.
Auvinen gave a warning of the shooting in a video
posted on the internet.
Wreaths and candles have been placed around the
grounds of the school in Tuusula, north of Helsinki, and a national day
of mourning has been held.
Local education officials have also set up a crisis
centre in a nearby church to help those affected by the tragedy.
'Random killings'
Investigators said Auvinen appeared bent on causing
maximum bloodshed when he opened fire with a pistol at Jokela High
School on Wednesday morning, killing the headmistress, a nurse and six
fellow pupils.
"Auvinen had 500 cartridges on him. Thus far 69
cartridge cases were found in the school building," a police spokesman
said, adding that all of the dead had been shot several times.
Detective Superintendent Tero Haapala said Auvinen
had apparently selected his victims at random.
"There's nothing that links him with the victims
except that they attended the same school," he told the Associated Press
news agency.
After police surrounded the school building, Auvinen
turned his weapon on himself. He was taken to hospital with critical
head wounds and later died.
Det Haapala described the young man as a "lonely
rider" who had been bullied by other students at the secondary school,
which has 400 pupils between 12 and 18.
He added that the motive behind the attack remained
unclear, "but the explanation can be found mainly in his web writings
and his social behaviour".
Going by the username Sturmgeist89, Auvinen posted a
home-made film called "Jokela High School massacre 11/7/2007" on YouTube
showing him pointing a gun and declaring himself a "social Darwinist"
who would "eliminate all who I see unfit".
'Day of sorrow'
A national day of mourning was held across Finland on
Thursday for the victims of the deadliest peacetime shooting in the
nation's history.
Several grieving students laid wreaths and candles
around the school, which was still sealed off by police to allow
forensic experts to reconstruct the incident.
After a memorial service at Helsinki Cathedral,
President Tarja Halonen called on Finns to support each other in a "day
of sorrow" for the country.
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen described
the shooting as a "great tragedy".
"This is an awful day... The shooting has deeply
undermined the sense of security in society... Nobody had expected such
things," he said.
Following the incident, the Finnish government met in
an emergency session to consider tightening school security.
Correspondents say that although gun ownership in
Finland is the third highest in the world, incidents of this kind are
extremely rare in a country that prides itself on very low levels of
violent crime.
Profile of Pekka-Erik Auvinen, the YouTube killer
By Alison Godfrey
November 08, 2007
PEKKA-ERIC Auvinen sat
among the chaos he had caused at Jokela High
School, pressed a .22 calibre pistol against
his skull and pulled the trigger. He had
done what he had come to do.
He had killed seven students
and a teacher in the small town of Tuusula, in
southern Finland. The killing spree came just
hours after he posted a final video on YouTube,
the last chapter in a grim catalogue that
foreshadowed his deadly intent.
The 18-year-old student, who
was fascinated by Nazi and Stalinist ideologies,
saw it as his job to rid the human race of "failures
of natural selection”.
In recent weeks Auvinen
posted several blogs and videos on the internet.
He called them the "Manifesto of a Natural
Selector". The blonde haired teenager railed
against society, said he no longer wants to be a
part of it and predicted killing people.
“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”, he wrote on one blog.
Auvinen set up a YouTube
account under the name of Sturmgeist89 and
described himself as an 18-year old Finnish man
"who is ready to die for his cause."
He uploaded a selection of
scenes from Schindler's List in which
Jews are tortured and killed, a tribute to
Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
and a post glorifying the last days of the Twin
Towers. American serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer
and a tribute to the Unabomber were also among
Sturmgeist89's collection of macabre tributes.
It wasn’t long before Auvinen
moved on from his heros and began to post videos
of himself.
In a video called “Me and my
gun, Catherine (.22 LR semi-automatic Sig Sauer
Mosquito). I love her! :)" Auvinen aimed the
weapon directly at the camera. And just days ago
he uploaded a film of himself using apples for
target practice in a forest.
Auvinen's friends say the
teenager began to draw pictures involving guns
and he seemed disturbed. But when they asked
about his strange behaviour, the gunman said he
was joking.
Online, though, Auvinen left
little doubt of his intentions.
Weearing a shirt proclaiming
"Humanity is overrated", Auvinen told the world
of his plan to murder those he saw as "unfit,
disgraces of human race".
Sturmgeist89's last YouTube
post entitled Jokela High School Massacre -
11/7/2007shows a still photo of a low building
that appears to be Jokela High School.
The photo breaks apart to
reveal a red-tinted picture of a man pointing a
handgun at the camera.
Only hours after he last
edited this last post Auvinen systematically
prowled the hallways of Jeokela High School
targeting his victims.
Biography of a teen killer
By Harry de Quetteville - Telegraph.co.uk
08/11/2007
Holed up in Jokela High School with eight victims
lying dead in corridors nearby and police closing in, Finland’s teenage
gunman Pekka-Eric Auvinen prepared to leave behind the “miserable,
arrogant and selfish human race”.
Pointing his .22 calibre pistol at his own head, he
pulled the trigger, no doubt intending his fanatical views to live on
through the internet.
There in cyberspace, a young white man
with short blond hair calling himself Sturmgeist89 - presumed to be the
Auvinen - had spent the last few weeks broadcasting an extremist
worldview weaving together far-left and neo-Nazi strands.
Together it formed what he called the
“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”, he noted in an online blog.
In his account on the video sharing
website Youtube, which he accessed for the last time just hours before
the shooting, Sturmgeist89 wrote he was “prepared to fight and die for
my cause”.
“I, as a natural selector, will
eliminate all who I see unfit, disgraces of human race and failures of
natural selection.”
Jokela student Tuomas Hulkkonen, who
has known the gunman for 10 years said that in recent days he had acted
bizarrely, drawing pictures of guns and extreme violence.
“It’s pretty hard to digest this
equation, when a guy you know does something like this,” said Mr
Hulkkonen.
But police chief Matti Tohkanen said
the gunman was “from an ordinary family,” belonged to a gun club and got
a license for his pistol two weeks ago.
A teacher at Jokela school said the
killer had become increasingly radical in recent months, developing a
fascination with Nazi and Stalinist ideologies.
Other Sturmgeist videos posted to the
internet include tributes to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the teenage
gunmen who killed 13 people at Columbine High School in the US in 1999.
American mass-murderer Jeffrey Dahmer,
who preyed on gay men, and Theodore Kaczynski, the US anti-government
terrorist known as the Unabomber, are among other killers featured
online by Sturmgeist.
The Sturmgeist motto appears to be
summed up by one video, which opens with a picture of an overweight man
entitled: “Humanity is overrated”.
The online videos also feature
Sturmgeist himself, often brandishing a .22 pistol, which he apparently
called Catherine.
“Me and my gun, Catherine (.22 LR semi-automatic
Sig Sauer Mosquito). I love her! :) “ is the title to one video which
shows a young man aiming the weapon directly at the camera. Recently the
video postings became even more disturbing.
In a film uploaded just two days ago,
the man is shown using apples for target practice in a forest.
Sturmgeist’s final film left little
doubt as to his intentions.
The film “Jokela High School Massacre
- 11/7/2007” is steeped in a blood red colour, with Sturmgeist posing
with a gun as the camera zooms in on the school and heavy metal music
blares out in the background.
The videos and 'manifesto’ are similar
to recorded rants by Seung-Hui Cho, who carried out the deadliest school
shooting in America earlier this year when he killed 32 people and
injured many others at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.
The similarities are sure to raise
fears that the web is becoming a easy platform for potential killers to
broadcast their hate before ultimately carrying out their internet
threats.
Perhaps aptly then, for someone who claimed to be a
'superior human’, the killer failed to go out in a blaze of glory, and
is now being kept alive in a vegetative state is a Finnish hospital.
Grief and disbelief in Finland after school
massacre
TUUSULA, Finland (AFP)
Lit candles are seen
around a pool in front
of the Jokela school
center in Tuusula,
Finland, a day after a
shooting at the school
center. Normally
tranquil Finland was
struggling to comprehend
Thursday why a teenage
gunman massacred eight
people at a school in
what he claimed was an
attack on "humanity".
Normally tranquil
Finland was struggling
to comprehend Thursday
why a teenage gunman
massacred eight people
at a school in what he
claimed was an attack on
"humanity".
Flags flew at half mast
across the Nordic
country a day after 18-year-old
Pekka-Eric Auvinen went
on his shooting spree at
Jokela High School in
Tuusula -- a small,
picturesque town of just
30,000 inhabitants on
the banks of a lake
north of Helsinki.
Auvinen, a broad-shouldered,
blond-haired youth
described by police as
"a lonely person with a
strong anger against
society and radical
thoughts," walked
through the school late
Wednesday morning,
peppering hallways and
classrooms with 69
bullets.
When his 20-minute
shooting rampage was
over, five boys aged
between 16 and 18, the
61-year-old headmistress,
a 42-year-old female
nurse and a 25-year-old
single mother taking an
adult training class at
the school were dead,
all of them with
multiple gun shot wounds
to the head and upper
body.
The twelve people
injured in the attack,
most of them suffering
cuts from broken window
panes as they
frantically jumped out
of windows to escape the
rain of bullets, had
been released from
hospital.
Police, who gave no
details on the order in
which the victims had
been shot, said Auvinen
had also tried to set a
second floor corridor on
fire using an
unidentified inflammable
liquid before shooting
himself in the head in a
bathroom near the school
cafeteria.
Auvinen, who died of his
wounds late Wednesday,
was carrying 320 more
bullets when he was
found, according to
police, who found no
other weapons in his
home.
"From the first
indication we have, he
shot randomly, but this
kind of thing is under
investigation still,"
police officer Jan Olof
Nyholm told a press
conference, adding that
the gunman had carried
out his deadly rampage
alone.
Auvinen, described as an
adherent of extreme
philosophies on both the
left and the right, had
posted a notice on
website YouTube before
the attack detailing how
he would carry out the
massacre as well as a
video entitled "Jokela
High School Massacre --
11/7/2007".
"I don't want this to be
called only as 'school
shooting'," he said of
the massacre, which
appears to have been
planned to coincide with
the anniversary of the
Bolshevik revolution.
In the "attack
information", he clearly
detailed his intentions.
"Target: Jokela High
School, students and
faculty, society,
humanity, human race ...
Attack type: mass murder,
political terrorism."
"Although I choosed
(sic) the school as
target, my motives for
the attack are political
and much, much deeper
and therefore I don't
want this to be called
only as 'school shooting',"
he added in the message
which was rapidly
removed from the sight
after attack.
Several of the 18-year-old's
classmates and teachers
described a brilliant
but complex loner
obsessed with weapons,
Internet war games and
revolutionary history
who was often bullied
and tormented.
Students said the
perpetrator of one of
the worst tragedies in
recent Finnish history
had made no secret of
his admiration for
Hitler and Stalin and
had been taking anti-depressant
medications, something
police refused to
comment on.
Auvinen left a suicide
note for his family that
had been handed over to
police.
"It was a kind of
goodbye letter to the
relatives," Nyholm said,
adding that the boy's
family had been placed
under police protection
because of threats.
The shooting sent
shockwaves through
Finland, which with its
mere 5.3 million
inhabitants and low
crime rates, is
unaccustomed to such
violence.
"Tuusula will have
lifelong scars," mayor
Hannu Joensivu told the
FNB news agency.
Finland Declares Day of
Mourning After School
Murders
By
Diana ben-Aaron and Juho
Erkheikki
Nov.
8 (Bloomberg) -- Finland
declared a national day
of mourning after
yesterday's killing of
six high school pupils
and two staff members,
the deadliest peacetime
attack in the country's
history.
An
18-year-old man armed
with a handgun shot six
students, five male and
one female, as well as a
43-year-old nurse and
the principal, Helena
Kalmi, 61, at Jokela
High School yesterday.
The gunman then shot
himself in the head and
died in a Helsinki
hospital last night.
`"First
I felt pity, then anger,''
said Seppo Halonen, a
civil servant who has
lived in Jokela for more
than 20 years, as he
stared past police
barricades in wet
snowfall at the school
last night. "It's
impossible to imagine
the agony the parents
are going through.''
The
gunman, Pekka-Eric
Auvinen, came from a
family of rock musicians
and was a member of a
local shooting club. He
left a warning on
YouTube about two hours
before police were
alerted to the shootings
at lunchtime yesterday.
Police said at a news
conference last night
that his motives and the
sequence of the
shootings were still
unclear. The gunman was
a social outcast who was
bullied in school, the
Associated Press cited a
senior police official
as saying.
YouTube Video
The
YouTube video, titled "Jokela
High School Massacre
11/7/2007,'' opened with
an image of the school,
and consisted mainly of
red cartoon-like
pictures of Auvinen
shooting at the viewer.
Auvinen's user profile,
Sturmgeist89, included a
manifesto in which he
described himself as a
"natural selector'' who
"will eliminate all whom
I see unfit, disgraces
to the human race and
failures of natural
selection.''
Auvinen's YouTube
account carried a total
of 89 videos, including
films of himself at
target practice or
showing pills labeled as
antidepressants together
with footage of the two
students who carried out
the Columbine, Colorado,
massacre in 1999.
Auvinen also left a
suicide note, in which
he said goodbye to his
family, police said at a
briefing today.
Police said they found
69 bullet casings at the
scene, and Auvinen had
more than 320 live
bullets left. He also
tried to start a fire on
the second floor of the
school, they said.
Auvinen used a 22-caliber
Sig Sauer Mosquito
pistol capable of firing
10 bullets in five
seconds, according to
police.
Finland has the most
guns per capita in
Europe, a total of 1.8
million firearms outside
of army use in a country
of 5.3 million people,
according to Amnesty
International. That is
the third-highest rate
in the world after the
U.S. and Yemen. Any
adult can own a gun if
it is registered with a
shooting club.
Country Village
Jokela, whose narrow
roads were yesterday
blanketed in wet snow,
is a typical Finnish
country village with a
couple of grocery stores,
a gas station, a
convenience store, and
two pubs. Although many
people commute to work
in Helsinki, less than
half an hour's train
ride away, it has a
vibrant community life
and a young, growing
population.
After
9 p.m. yesterday, the
streets were almost
empty.
"You
wouldn't think something
like this could happen
in a village like Jokela,''
said Aleksi Ampuja, a
student at the Jokela
school, on his way with
a friend to a crisis
meeting organized for
the pupils.
Classes at the secondary
school in Jokela, which
has a population of
5,300 inhabitants, are
cancelled for the rest
of the week. Other
schools in Tuusula, the
municipality, 30
kilometers (18.6 miles)
north of Helsinki, where
Jokela is located, will
open as usual.
Dead Students
The
male students who died
ranged in age from 16 to
18, according to a
police statement. The
female student was 25
years old and raising
two children by herself,
the newspaper Helsingin
Sanomat said. Students
in Finland are able to
leave school at 16 and
return later for extra
years of study that
allow them to apply to
university.
Officers found Auvinen
wounded in the head from
an apparent self-inflicted
gunshot. The assailant
and most of the victims
were in the lower lobby
of the school, police
said. Ten children were
hospitalized following
the attack. Twelve
people were wounded in
total and were allowed
home last night. The
emergency was declared
over after 3 p.m.,
according to the Tuusula
municipality Web site.
Auvinen died at 10:14
p.m., Eero Hirvensalo, a
senior physician at
Helsinki's Toeoeloe
Hospital where he was
taken, said in an
interview.
"This
deals a heavy blow to
our feeling of security,''
Finland's Prime Minister
Matti Vanhanen said in a
press conference last
night. "As a society and
a community, we have
gotten used to feeling
secure, and this event
opens a crack that will
last for a long time.''
1989 Incident
In
1989, a 14-year-old boy
in Finland killed two
students over alleged
bullying in a school
shooting.
Yesterday's attack was
the first major incident
involving schoolchildren
or students since a lone
gunman killed 32 people
at Virginia Polytechnic
Institute and State
University, known as
Virginia Tech, in the
U.S. on April 16.
On
April 20, 1999, two
students at Columbine
High School in Littleton,
Colorado, killed 12
students, one teacher
and themselves. On March
13, 1996, a gunman
killed 16 children, a
teacher and himself at
Dunblane Primary School
in Dunblane, Scotland.
Auvinen's father, Ismo
Auvinen, who has worked
for the Finnish railways
for more than 30 years,
performs in the Big Papa
Auvinen band with his
wife, Mikaela Vuorio,
according to the group's
Web page.
Rock Band
The
elder Auvinen used to
play guitar with Finnish
rock legend Albert
Jaervinen, whose band
The Hurriganes is the
subject of a popular
movie in the country.
Jaervinen died in 1991
on a London block
already made famous by
the death of Jimi
Hendrix there 21 years
earlier.
Pekka-Eric
Auvinen, the first of
two sons, was described
in the Finnish media as
a straight-A student who
was attracted to extreme
political views. His
friends noticed a change
in his behavior weeks
before the shooting and
warned the principal
about him, local
newspapers said, citing
unidentified classmates.
He got a permit to carry
a gun on Oct. 19, state
broadcaster YLE said.
"The
authorities knew the
killer's background,''
Halonen said. "They
should have acted on the
knowledge.''
Tuusula is still largely
countryside. Its roads
plunge into virgin pine
forest, offering
families the chance to
build a house on their
own land while still
remaining within an easy
commute of Helsinki.
The
Jokela school remained
cordoned off by police
and soldiers as people
left candles nearby. The
church where students
waited for the attack to
be over is open around
the clock as a crisis
center.
Finland Reviews
Gun Laws After Eight
Killed in School
Massacre
08.11.2007
An 18-year-old
high
school
student
shot and
killed
eight
people
on
Wednesday,
Nov. 7,
in one
of the
worst
tragedies
in
Finland's
recent
history.
The
president
has
called
for a
review
of the
country's
handgun
laws.
Six high
school
students,
the head
teacher
and a
school
nurse
were
killed
on
Wednesday
in the
southern
Finnish
town of
Tuusula
when a
student
began a
shooting
rampage
in the
middle
of
class.
Pekka-Eric
A. then
turned
the gun
on
himself
and died
from
injuries
at the
hospital
later
that
evening.
One
in two
Finns
owns a
gun
The
tragedy
would
influence
opinions
about
handgun
laws,
Finnish
Prime
Minister
Matti
Vanhanen
said at
a press
conference.
According
to a
study by
the
Graduate
Institute
of
International
Studies
in
Geneva,
about 56
percent
of Finns
own a
firearm,
placing
the
Scandinavian
country
third in
gun
possession,
behind
the US
and
Yemen.
The
minimum
age for
applying
for a
gun
license
in
Finland
is 15.
Gunman
posted
video
warning
on the
Internet
In mid-October,
Pekka-Eric
A. had
posted
plans
for the
rampage
on the
Internet
forum
YouTube,
where he
also
presented
the
22-calibre
pistol
he'd
gotten
from his
shooting
club.
Police
said
he'd had
a
license
for the
weapon
since
Oct. 19.
The 18-year-old
was
known to
support
radical
causes,
teachers
and
fellow
students
said.
The
Finnish
press
has
noted
that the
Nov. 7
date of
the
massacre
coincides
with the
anniversary
of the
Bolshevik
takeover
in
Russia
in 1917.
"His [academic]
performance
was way
above
average,"
said a
teacher
about
the
gunman.
He added
that the
boy was
particularly
interested
in right-wing
and left-wing
extremism,
according
to a DPA
news
agency
report.
The
Finnish
government
declared
a
national
day of
mourning
on
Thursday
and
flags
were
lowered
to half-mast
throughout
the
country.
Jokela
High
School,
located
40
kilometers
(25
miles)
north of
Helsinki,
will
remain
closed
until
Monday
and a
crisis
center
has been
set up
in a
nearby
church.
