Police were alerted to the incident in Vantaa, northeast of the capital, Helsinki, shortly after 9 a.m. local time Tuesday. Images from the scene showed a large police presence at the school, which has around 800 students and 90 employees and is attended by children ages 7 to 15. According to authorities, the suspect was in custody by 10 a.m. and had a handgun in his possession. The weapon is licensed and belongs to a close relative, police said.
Police said the crimes are murder and attempted murder “due to some degree of planning,” but because the suspect is 12 years old, he is not criminally responsible.
“My thoughts are with the victims, their loved ones and the other students and staff of Viertola school,” Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said on X. “We are following the situation closely and are waiting for updated information from the authorities.”
School shootings are unusual in Finland, with four previous incidents in the past 35 years.
“We thought that as a society, we would have learned from previous school shootings,” National Police Commissioner Seppo Kolehmainen said at the news conference Tuesday. “Such a day should not have happened.”
In 1989, two 14-year-olds were killed by a fellow student in Rauma, in southwest Finland. The country’s deadliest school shooting occurred in 2008, when a 22-year-old shot and killed 10 people before turning the gun on himself.
The 2008 incident prompted a tightening of gun laws. There are 430,000 licensed gun owners in a population of 5.5 million, in a country where hunting is popular.
A Secret Service study of 41 U.S. school shootings found that “most of the attackers were bullied by their classmates, and for over half of the attackers the bullying appeared to be of a persistent pattern which lasted for weeks, months, or years.” As of March 6, there have been at least 16 school shootings in the U.S. this year.
