Wednesday, November 07, 2007

If you want global notoriety...

...focus on the international media market, and ignore the local. The 18 year old boy who killed seven of his school mates and one of his teachers today, before failing to shoot himself properly in the head, left his message to the world in English. It's not bad English either, he obviously paid attention in class. You can read it here, although don't expect more than adolescent rage mixed with a decent reading list. In fact the t-shirt he wearing in the photo below kind of sums it up.

Two side points, the international press is doing the "even in Finland!" surprised line. There hasn't been a school shooting like this before, but in 2003 an equally messed up kid made a bomb that killed himself and six others in Helsinki area shopping centre, and actually gun crime is in Finland is rather high; much, much more than the UK for example.

And secondly, failing to kill yourself by shooting yourself in the head isn't as uncommon as one might expect.

Update: the shooter died during the night, and I was sort of wrong saying this was the first school shooting in Finland. There hasn't been an incident on this scale before but in 1989 in Rauma a boy shot and killed two fellow students.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thats right. Its more difficult then TV makes it looks. most become inert comatose vegetables for the rest of their lives.