2014 Moscow school shooting

On February 3, 2014, 15-year-old high school student Sergey Gordeyev (also spelled as Sergei Gordeev; Russian: Сергей Гордеев) opened fire at School No. 263 in Otradnoye District, Moscow, Russia, killing a teacher. Gordeyev then took 29 students hostage, killed one police officer, and injured another. Later on, he surrendered to the authorities. It is the second school shooting in Russia's history, the first being the Beslan school hostage crisis.

Shooting

At around 11:40 a.m., Gordeyev, concealing his weapons with a bag and fur coat, went to his school armed with a Tikka T3 rifle and a small-caliber Japanese Browning BAR M1918 that belonged to his father, a police colonel.

He threatened the security guard and went to his geography classroom, where he shot his teacher, 29-year-old Andrey Kirillov (Russian: Андрей Кириллов), in the stomach, then fatally shot him in the head upon seeing he was still alive.

After killing Kirillov, he then took the class of 29 students hostage. Gordeyev then shot at responding police officers in the school, wounding Warrant Officer Sergei Bushuyev, 38, and Senior Sergeant Vladimir Krokhin, 29; Bushuyev later died at a hospital, while Krokhin survived a gunshot wound to the shoulder.

About an hour after the shooting first started, the Special Forces responded to the scene. Gordeyev initially called his mother before the Special Forces called in his father to negotiate with him. He initially spoke with Gordeyev on the phone for fifteen minutes before being brought into the school with a bulletproof vest to personally talk to him; thirty minutes afterward, Gordeyev released the hostages. At around 1:00 p.m., Gordeyev surrendered to authorities and was captured. A Russian report stated that a total of eleven shots were fired by Gordeyev during the shooting.

Victims

Two people were killed in the shooting, while a third was wounded. The victims are:

Andrey Kirillov, 29 (teacher, killed)
Warrant Officer Sergey Bushuyev, 38 (policeman, killed)
Senior Sergeant Vladimir Krokhin, 29 (policeman, wounded)

Reaction

Russian President Vladimir Putin called this incident a tragedy and asked to give one's attention to children's education and gun control. He also told a Moscow Kremlin advisory council on the arts and culture that "the new generation...needs to be raised with good artistic taste and the ability to understand and value the theatrical, dramatic and musical arts." Criticism was also aimed at violent video games and exposure to American culture. Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin later stated that schools in Moscow have been set to be reviewed for security.

Perpetrator

15-year-old Sergey Gordeyev was identified as the perpetrator of the shooting. He attended School No. 263, was a straight-A student, and was due to graduate with honors, being described as a "model student" who set up "an example for the whole school", but also "quiet". He reportedly had conflicts with a geography teacher, believing that he was trying to interfere with his graduation.

Reports initially stated that this teacher wasn't Andrey Kirillov, but Kirillov was later identified as the teacher Gordeyev had conflicts with. Russian Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin later stated that Gordeyev was suffering from an emotional disorder, while other students stated that he had no previous apparent conflicts with other teachers and fellow pupils.

Wikipedia.org

 

Moscow teen kills two in rare Russian school shooting

By Ian Bateson and Maria Tsvetkova - Reuters.com

Mon Feb 3, 2014

A teenager described as a model student shot a teacher and a police officer dead and took more than 20 of his schoolmates hostage in a Moscow classroom on Monday, days before Russia hosts the Winter Olympics under tight security.

The suspect was disarmed and detained about an hour after the shootings after talking to his father, the owner of the two rifles with which he forced his way into the school in northern Moscow at midday.

The incident rattled nerves in a country on high alert for Islamist militant violence as athletes and spectators arrive for the Sochi Games, a prestige project that will help shape President Vladimir Putin's legacy.

Putin, who says young Russians are suffering from a moral vacuum left by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, said the attack might have been avoided with better cultural education.

It is almost unheard-of for a student to attack a school in Russia. A horrific assault in 2004 on a school in Beslan in the North Caucasus, in which more than 330 people were killed, was the work of Islamist separatists.

Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said the Moscow student may have suffered an "emotional breakdown".

The attacker knocked on the door of the 10th grade class about five minutes after the start of a lesson, his classmate Ivan Chekanov, one of the students who was held hostage, told Reuters later on Monday.

"We were glad to see him at first - but then he shot the geography teacher," Chekanov, 16, told Reuters. "He fired the shot, then he got up onto the podium, laid out his rifles and said he had 100 bullets and that he had come to die."

"WHY IS HE STILL ALIVE?"

"Andrei Nikolayevich (the teacher) was dripping with blood, he had fallen but he was still alive," he said. (The attacker) asked us: 'Why is he still alive? I killed him.' Everyone was silent."

"He said, 'Well, guys, your answer gets a 'D', and fired several more shots," Chekanov said by telephone.

The shooting sent dozens of other students scurrying into the street in sub-zero temperatures while a police helicopter landed in a snow-covered field outside and at least six ambulances rolled up to the scene.

Officials said the assailant had also shot a policeman responding to the incident, who died in hospital, and that another policeman had been wounded.

The incident began around noon when the attacker cocked a gun at a guard who tried to stop him entering the school, the federal Investigative Committee said.

It said the guard had managed to press an alarm button, bringing police to the school. "When the police entered, the shooter opened fire at them, wounding one and killing another."

Markin said the assailant fired at least 11 shots.

His father was brought in and spent 15 minutes talking to his son by phone before being given a bulletproof vest and going into the classroom. His son began releasing students 30 minutes later, Moscow police chief Anatoly Yakunin said.

"Once all the students were released and he was alone with his father, special forces ... seized the moment and the 10th grader was neutralized and detained," Yakunin said.

Chekanov said the attacker had phoned his mother from the classroom. "Then his father called, and he told him where the geography room was, and to come unarmed."

"His father asked him what he had done, where he had got the rifle," Chekanov said. "He got the weapons at home and he got the ammunition from the dresser or the cabinet - he answered something like that."

"HE WAS LIKE EINSTEIN"

A former classmate, Sakhobudin Tagoyev, said the alleged attacker was a model student who in the past had "set an example for the whole school".

"The teachers liked and respected him," Tagoyev said in an exchange with Reuters online. "He was like Einstein."

But Tagoyev also said the alleged attacker was quick to get nervous "if something did not work out for him ... or if he got bad grades".

Russian media said the alleged assailant might have been settling a score with the geography teacher. But Markin said there were "no serious grounds" to suspect the attack was the result of a personal conflict.

Putin told a Kremlin advisory council on the arts and culture in Pskov that "the new generation ... needs to be raised with good artistic taste and the ability to understand and value the theatrical, dramatic and musical arts".

"And if this was done as it should be in our country, maybe there would not be tragedies like the tragedy in Moscow today."

Irina Yarovaya, a pro-Kremlin lawmaker who heads the security committee in the State Duma, put some blame on "propaganda of aggression", such as violent computer games, but also said access to guns should be tightened.

She said the punishment for legal gun owners whose negligence enabled others to get their hands on weapons was "infinitesimal". The maximum sentence for the offence is six months.

Duma international affairs committee head Alexei Pushkov suggested Russia had embraced U.S. culture with deadly effect.

"Moscow school shooting: American movies and domestic serials, full of violence, are producing results - now it is like the USA here," he tweeted. "Is this what we wanted?"

(Additional reporting by Thomas Grove, Vladimir Soldatkin and Gabriela Baczynska; Writing by Steve Gutterman; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

 

Student gunman kills policeman and teacher in hostage takeover of class of 20 students in school near Moscow

Pupil held students and a teacher hostage in a biology classroom
He was detained after killing a policeman and teacher
The hostage-taker named as Sergey Gordeev, believed to be 16
Believed the pupil and teacher previously had a conflict over his marks

By Will Stewart and Tara Brady - DailyMail.co.uk

February 3, 2014

The 'straight-A' 16 year old Sergey Gordeev sparked a nationwide security alert amid initial fears his attack at his school near Moscow was a terrorist incident linked to the Winter Olympics which open on Friday.

He held 24 pupils hostage for almost an hour, and gunned down his teacher Andrei Kirillov, a married father with two small children, apparently in revenge for unusually poor marks in geography or biology.

He also shot and killed married policeman Sergei Bushuev, 38, as he fired a volley of 11 shots at officers surrounding the school.

Special forces troops were used to detain him after his father urged him to put down his weapon.

The armed pupil and teacher previously had a conflict over his marks.

This could have prevented the boy leaving school with a 'gold' medal, say sources at the school.

A dramatic text message from a girl in Gordeev's class to her mother during the terrifying siege read: 'A machine gun. We are at school. He is shooting.

'Mama, aaaa-aa-aa. Save me! Its not a joke. Mama. Its awful. He's gone mad. We are hostages on floor 1, room 2.'

Gordeev earlier brandished two rifles to as he overpowered the security man at School Number 263 on the outskirts of Moscow in what was initially seen as a terrorist attack.

Soon it became clear it was a disgruntled pupil who had seized his father's guns to gain revenge on his mild-mannered teacher.

The rest of the school was evacuated as police ordered the boy's father to call him on his mobile and demand he spares his classmates' lives.

One teenage girl said: 'He shot the teacher in the stomach. Then he wanted to make sure that he was dead, so he fired another 'insurance' shot to the head.'

The father - believed to be a law enforcement officer - then donned a bullet-proof jacket and negotiated with his son the lay down the guns and surrender.

The move was seen as saving Russia from a school massacre.

A student gunman has killed a policeman and teacher after holding more than 20 students hostage in a school near Moscow.

Andrei Polipchuk, police spokesman, said: 'All the students are alive, nobody is injured. The attacker is arrested, he is identified.

'He is a student of this very school.'

Reports say the boy's father was involved in persuading him to give himself up and prevent a school massacre.

'The father of the boy immediately came to the school,' said a local official.

'Sergei Gordeyev was a straight-A student,' said a spokesman for the Investigative Committee, equivalent of the FBI.

'It appears that he had an emotional breakdown.'

Fellow students said he accused the teacher of giving him low marks so threatening his chance to get a 'gold medal' for academic performance.

'He persuaded the boy to put down his arms and to let the children go.'

Psychologists are now working with the released children.

The dead policeman was named as Sergei Bushuev.

He died in an ambulance at the scene. A second wounded officer was rushed to Sklifosovsky hospital in Moscow.

Another policeman was shot and injured.

'The person who took 20 people and a teacher hostage is a student in the upper classes at the same school.

'He has been neutralised and all the students have been freed,' Interior Ministry spokesman Andrei Pilipchuk said on state TV.

'One policeman was fatally wounded during the operation and died in hospital and a teacher at School No. 263 was also killed,' he said.

The shooting sent dozens of students scurrying out the school while a police helicopter landed in a snow-covered field outside.

It came with Russia in the global spotlight four days before it hosts the 2014 Winter Olympics in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi.