Russian teenager kills 10-year-boy in knife attack at school outside Moscow

A 15-year-old schoolboy has stabbed and killed a 10-year-old fellow pupil at his school in the village of Gorki-2, west of Moscow, Russia’s Investigative Committee said on Tuesday, adding that the attacker had been detained at the scene. 

The teenager, identified by Russian Telegram news channels as Timofey K., entered the school armed with a knife and began attacking both pupils and members of staff. A security guard was also stabbed during the attack, Telegram channel Baza reported.

Baza also said the attacker was wearing a T-shirt bearing the phrase “No Lives Matter” and a protective helmet with several inscriptions, including “Beat the Jews, Save Russia”, a slogan used by Russian neo-Nazis, as well as a quote attributed to Dylann Roof, the perpetrator of the 2017 Charleston church shooting in the US.

The teenager filmed the attack on his phone and posted the footage online, news channel Mash has reported. The video shows him approaching pupils and asking them about their nationality, spraying a security guard with pepper spray, and chasing pupils with a knife, before fatally stabbing a 10-year-old boy, who was ethnically Tajik, according to Telegram news channel Ostorozhno Novosti, in the stairwell.

Moscow region Governor Andrey Vorobyov called the attack “a horrific act of extreme cruelty” in a post on Telegram on Tuesday and said that the circumstances leading to the incident had to be understood. He also called for “everything possible” being done to prevent such an attack from happening again, and urged the media not to publish footage of the attack out of respect for the victim’s family.

The Investigative Committee said a criminal case had been opened on charges of murder and attempted murder.