A teenage student armed with two handguns and a knife opened fire in a vocational training college in Athens yesterday, wounding three people before shooting himself in the head, Greek authorities said.
The 19-year-old gunman died of his injuries after being taken to a hospital. He left a note accusing his fellow students of picking on him.
“He succumbed during the operation to save him,” senior Health Ministry official Panayiotis Efstathiou said.
PHOTO: EPA
Police said an 18-year-old student at a state college in western Athens was seriously injured and two men outside the college building were shot and lightly injured. All three were hospitalized.
Although there have been cases of stabbings at Greek schools, the shooting is unprecedented.
Police identified the gunman as an immigrant from the Georgian breakaway region of Abkhazia.
“He left a note saying he couldn’t take it any more,” police spokesman Panayiotis Stathis said. “It seems his motive was revenge.”
Stathis said the gunman shot his fellow student four times.
“He may have believed [the victim] was most strongly involved in the activities against him.”
He said the shooter was armed with two handguns, and a knife was found in his bag.
Police say the gunman arrived around 8:45am, a quarter of an hour after lessons had started, and shot the student victim in the courtyard before running out.
He then shot two workers at a nearby shop who tried to stop him, one in the leg and the other in the arm. Then he went to a park close to the school and shot himself in the head.
Efstathiou, the Health Ministry official, said the student who was shot by the gunman was in serious condition with gunshot wounds in the chest, arms and legs, while the other two men had lighter injuries.
The shooting comes amid a recent surge of bloody bank robberies, homicides, muggings and violent burglaries in Greece. The country has no history of violent crime, and the incidents have embarrassed Greece’s conservative government, which has been shaken by a series of financial scandals and holds a slim one-seat majority in parliament.
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