(CNN) A teenager opened fire at a school in the Serbian capital of Belgrade just after classes had started on Wednesday morning, killing eight children and a security guard and seriously wounding several others, officials said.
The boy — a 13-year-old student at the school — allegedly sketched the attack ahead of time on crumpled pieces of paper that officials showed at a somber press conference. He called the police himself after the shootings, they said.
The rare and possibly unprecedented event, in a country with strict firearms laws but high rates of gun ownership, sent shockwaves through the local community and beyond.
The first reports of the shooting emerged shortly after students arrived to start the day at Vladislav Ribnikar Elementary School, a prominent institution in Vračar, an upscale area of the Serbian capital. The shocked parents rushed to the scene.
Seven women and one man were killed, including the security guard, Belgrade’s Police Chief Veselin Milić told a press conference. An additional six children and a teacher were hospitalized, Serbia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs said.
The suspect opened fire in a history classroom, “because it was close to the entrance of the school,” he added.
He first killed the security guard, then went to another classroom where he shot several of his classmates, Milić said. The teenager then called the police and waited to be arrested on the school grounds.
The alleged shooter was later captured on video taken from the school handcuffed with a jacket over his head and wearing blue, skinny jeans. He was flanked by police and driven away in an unmarked police car.
Serbian Interior Minister Bratislav Gasic said the suspect’s father was also arrested, adding that it was known he had previously visited a shooting range with his son, whose age was initially given as 14.
Parents gathered outside the school as police responded to the shooting.
According to Gasic, the boy brought two guns from the house. “The parent had some weapons and kept them locked up. The safe had a code. The kid obviously had the code as soon as he got hold of those two guns. And three frames loaded with 15 rounds each.”
Milić, the police chief, said the boy had a 9mm pistol and a small caliber pistol in a bag, as well as four Molotov cocktails.
Officials said the shooting was planned, and were shown sheets of paper said to show the suspect’s plans for the attack.
The parents had a hard time coming to terms with the shooting. One student’s father said he ran to the school to look for his daughter after seeing police at the scene, according to CNN affiliate N1.
“My son is still in shock, full of adrenaline, we haven’t calmed him down yet,” said a mother of one in N1.
Another father recounted a chaotic morning. “I was heading to the bank, and I saw a bunch of police. That was around 8:50. I came running. I saw the school psychologist, I saw the school staff, the teachers who were in shock,” the father told N1.
“The police came quickly, as I could see. I asked: ‘Where is my son?’ And allegedly, a man said that the history teacher had been shot. I went back to my apartment to check my son’s schedule, and he was actually in class. I took my wife with me and we went back to the street,” he said.
“I saw the security guard lying under the table, in a circle [of blood] I went through the door to find an assistant. I do not know what to do. I asked ‘Where is my son?’ and no one says anything,” said the father.
Police escorted the alleged shooter from the school.
Later, the man learned that his daughter had escaped unharmed.
The interior ministry said in a statement on Facebook that it was informed of the incident at 8.40 am local time (2.40 am ET). “All available police patrols were dispatched to the scene, where they immediately went to the school grounds and apprehended a minor, a seventh grader who was suspected of firing several shots from his father’s gun at the students and to the security guard,” the statement said.
A schoolgirl injured in the shooting has life-threatening injuries and is undergoing surgery, N1 reported.
“The injured are being given medical care, while the police are working to establish the facts and circumstances that led to this incident,” the ministry’s statement said.
“All police forces are still on the ground and working intensively to shed light on all the facts and events that led to this tragedy,” it added.
Serbia has high levels of gun ownership following its conflict with Kosovo in the 1990s; a 2018 study found that the country has the third highest rate of gun ownership in the world, tied with Montenegro and behind only the US and Yemen.
But the country has strict gun laws and has issued amnesties for owners to surrender or register illegal guns, meaning mass shootings are relatively rare, according to Reuters.
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Tanjug is no longer a government-owned news agency.
CNN’s Vladimir Banic contributed reporting.
