Jokela school shooting
Encyclopedia
The Jokela school massacre was a school shooting that occurred on November 7, 2007, at Jokela High School
in Jokela
, a town in the municipality of Tuusula
, Finland. The gunman, 18-year-old student Pekka-Eric Auvinen, entered the school on that morning armed with a semi-automatic pistol. He killed eight people and wounded one person in the toe before shooting himself in the head. He died later that evening in a Helsinki
hospital.
This was the second school shooting in the history of Finland. The previous incident occurred in 1989 at the Raumanmeri school in Rauma
, when a 14-year-old fatally shot two fellow students. Less than one year after the Jokela school massacre, another school shooting occurred in Kauhajoki
, where a gunman shot and killed 10 people before killing himself
.
), Pekka-Eric Auvinen entered the school's main hallway at Jokela High School
. The emergency services received the first phone call at 11:43. Most victims were later found in the entrance hallway of the school. At 11:44, school principal Helena Kalmi ordered all students and teachers to barricade themselves inside their classrooms. Kalmi then left the school administration office and tried to convince Auvinen to surrender. Auvinen shot Kalmi seven times in view of a group of students in the school yard, killing her. The school nurse later tried to help wounded students, but Auvinen killed her as well. Auvinen then began walking around the school, knocking on classroom doors. He shouted orders at some of the students, proclaimed a revolution, and urged the students to destroy school property. He also aimed his weapon at some people without shooting them. The victims sustained multiple injuries to the upper body and head. He later began pouring two-stroke engine fuel (a gasoline and oil mixture) on corridor walls and floors, but he was not able to ignite the fuel.
A police patrol vehicle arrived at 11:55, followed later by about one hundred police officers at about 12:30, including the Karhuryhmä
special operations unit. Even off-duty police officers arrived and surrounded the school. When the police tried to negotiate with Auvinen, he answered by firing a shot at the police at 12:04 local time. No officers were hit.
The shooting ended after 40 minutes when Auvinen shot himself in the head at 12:24. The police entered the school at 13:53. Auvinen was found in a boys' lavatory still alive but unconscious at 13:54. The police searched one room at a time for other shooters. The police were not able to secure the building until shortly before 16:00. No police officers fired their weapons.
Auvinen was taken to the Töölö
Hospital of the Helsinki University Central Hospital at 14:45 where he died at 22:15 from the self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The perpetrator of the Jokela school shooting, 18-year-old Pekka-Eric Auvinen, was a student at Jokela High School. He was born on June 4, 1989, in Tuusula, Finland. His father was a part-time musician
and full-time railroad worker, and his mother was former deputy of the Tuusula municipal council. He also had a brother seven years his junior.
He described himself in oxymoron
ic terms, “a cynical
existentialist
, antihuman
humanist
, antisocial social darwinist
, realistic idealist
and godlike atheist
” on his YouTube
user page Sturmgeist89. The police investigation confirmed that Auvinen was frequently bullied at school. One of his teachers described him as militant radical interested in both far-right and far-left movements. He was also interested in history and philosophy.
He had irregularly taken SSRI
-antidepressants one year prior to his death. These antidepressants are said to cause suicidal tendencies as a side-effect in early ages between 18 and 24.
.22 calibre
pistol had been legally obtained and registered to Auvinen on October 19. He had been given the licence since he was a member of a local shooting club and held no previous criminal record.
The Finnish police usually require a shooting hobby to begin with a .22 calibre weapon. The police cannot mandate that sports shooting take place in a club, or even in any kind of company; in the case of relatively low risk weapons, the permit decision may be based entirely on information provided by the applicant. Membership in a shooting club is nevertheless considered a risk control. Auvinen himself wanted to purchase a Beretta
9 mm pistol, but the application was rejected by police.
's “Stray Bullet” was used as background music. Videos of him shooting his new gun had been uploaded weeks prior to the shooting. Several hours after the event, YouTube suspended some videos belonging to the user account Sturmgeist89 and Naturalselector89 due to relations with the shootings. His previous YouTube account name was “naturalselector89”, which he used from March until it was suspended in October. Many of his videos were about other shootings and violent incidents, including the Columbine High School massacre
, the Waco Siege
, the Tokyo sarin gas attack
, and bombing during the Iraq invasion
.
According to his Manifesto, his motivation was alienation and contempt for humanity. Auvinen was disillusioned with democracy, writing "Democracy is a dictatorship of the moral majority... and the majority is manipulated and ruled by the state mafia", as well as the "devolution" of the human race due to "stupid , weak-minded people...reproducing more and faster than the intelligent, strong-minded people". He stated that he was hoping to inspire a revolution of the “small minority of strong-minded and intelligent individuals” against the “idiocracy“ of the “weak-minded masses”. He asserted that he did not want anything or anyone to be blamed for the shooting, and that he had planned it “in [his] own head”. He left a media package on Rapidshare
, a hosting site, explaining his actions and his motives for the shooting. It includes details of the attack, a manifesto, his “loves & hates”, some images of himself and a video of him firing a handgun. “I am prepared to fight and die for my cause”, read a posting by Sturmgeist. “I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see unfit, disgraces of human race and failures of natural selection.” “Sturmgeist” means storm spirit in German.
Although most of the original videos and files have been removed Auvinen's media package can still be found on the internet.
Several newspapers have suggested similarities between and inspirations for Auvinen's actions in the Columbine shootings. Auvinen's YouTube videos included footage related to Columbine. The KMFDM track used in his video, “Stray Bullet”, was also used on the website of Columbine shooter Eric Harris
.
and began analysing his Internet postings.
A spokesman for the cyber crime department of Helsinki police has stated that “it's highly probable that there was some form of contact between Pekka-Eric Auvinen and” Dillon Cossey, the 14-year-old boy arrested in October on suspicion of planning an attack on his school in a suburb of Philadelphia.
A 2,000-page police report into the shooting was released in April 2008.
were flown at half-staff
on Thursday, November 8, 2007 throughout the country by officials and private entities alike and the Finnish government
held a moment of silence while in session. The Prime Minister
, Matti Vanhanen
sent "his government's heartfelt condolences", strongly noting the need of the media, the parents and the schools to discuss the incident in correct light. The Finnish National Board of Education immediately posted directions for the teachers and principals on how to discuss the shootings with pupils, alongside with shorter instructions for parents. President
Tarja Halonen
sent her condolences as well. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland
has opened a crisis center, situated in the Church of Jokela, in which professional help is administered to those afflicted by the tragedy.
The Lutheran Archbishop Jukka Paarma
of Turku, the Orthodox Archbishop Leo of Karelia, the Catholic Bishop Józef Wróbel of Helsinki and other church authorities have expressed their condolences to the relatives and loved ones of those who died in the massacre. Throughout the country, church buildings have been open for anyone seeking pastoral care; the incident has also been a major topic in religious services, many of which have been specifically held because of the incident.
On 9 November 2007, the Finnish government decided to drop objections to the European Union
directive on firearms. This will likely mandate a common European minimum age limit of 18 years for gun ownership. After the decision was announced, interior minister
Anne Holmlund
commented through her aide that it wasn't a direct consequence of the shootings, as the directive had been prepared for a long time and "wouldn't have prevented the events anyway."
On 13 November 2007, the Finnish Government announced that it would set up a "Commission of Inquiry to investigate the Jokela school shooting and events that bear relevance to the incident". The investigation report was released in February 2009.
According to the Finnish Ministry of Justice, a legislative process aimed at establishing an enabling Act covering the Terms of an official Investigative Commission would be finalized by the end of March 2008. The plan is to have a Final Report, covering the Jokela school shooting incident, finalized in one year.
Estonia
– President
Toomas Hendrik Ilves
sent a message of condolences on behalf of the Estonian people to President Halonen, saying he had been shocked and saddened by the news.
Iceland
– President
Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson
sent a message of condolences on behalf of the Icelandic people to Finnish President Tarja Halonen. “On the behalf of me and the Icelandic people, I wish to express our condolences to the Finnish people for the tragic event in Tuusula earlier today.”
Ireland – President
Mary McAleese
, Taoiseach
Bertie Ahern
and a number of Irish schoolchildren expressed their condolences to Finnish President Tarja Halonen on November 12 during Halonen's state visit
to the country.
Norway – King Harald V sent a message of condolences to Finnish President Tarja Halonen. “It is with deep sorrow that I have received the news of the tragic of the Jokela secondary school in Tusby yesterday, which resulted in such a meaningless loss of lives. I send you my heartfelt condolences and my sincerest sympathies to all the bereaved and the Finnish people.”
Sweden – King
Carl XVI Gustaf
expressed his condolences and described the shooting as a horrific affair.
"Unfortunately this sort of thing is spreading around the world. That is odd," the king added at a news conference in Luleå
. The Swedish TV-channel SVT 2 would also show the movie Elephant the day after the massacre but they took it off the schedule in respect to Finland. Instead, the movie Swimming Pool
was shown.
European Union
– President of the European Commission
José Manuel Barroso said in a message to the Finnish prime minister Matti Vanhanen
that he had been "shocked and profoundly saddened to learn about the horrific campus murders."
and Maaninka
. The 16-year-old boy who posted a video titled "Maaninka massacre" on YouTube was arrested on November 11. The suspect has stated that the video was a joke.
Three weeks after the Jokela shootings, the Finnish police, flooded with hoax threats, made a public plea for threats against schools to cease. The police reminded prospective perpetrators of severe judicial consequences as well as of the feelings of the families touched by the Jokela events.
The Kauhajoki school shooting
was a school shooting that occurred on 23 September 2008, at Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences in Kauhajoki, a city in Western Finland. The gunman, 22-year-old culinary arts student Matti Juhani Saari, shot and fatally injured ten people with a semi-automatic pistol, before shooting himself in the head. He died a few hours later in Tampere University Hospital. Finnish police first stated that Saari "very likely" knew Pekka-Eric Auvinen, but in the final investigation no proof of that was found.
for conspiring to murder their school's principal and janitor. According to the principal, "they had spoken about and glorified Columbine High and what happened in Finland."
Jokela High School
Jokela High School is a public secondary school in Jokela School Centre in the village of Jokela, Tuusula municipality, Finland. It is located 43 kilometers outside the capital Helsinki. The school educates about 450 pupils. Jokela School Center also houses grades 7–9.-School shooting:The school...
in Jokela
Jokela
Jokela is one of the three administrative centers in the Finnish municipality Tuusula. It has a population of around 6,000 residents. The Jokela School Centre and the Jokela railway station serve the community...
, a town in the municipality of Tuusula
Tuusula
Tuusula is a municipality of Finland. It belongs to the Helsinki sub-region of the Uusimaa region. The municipality has a population of .-Geography:...
, Finland. The gunman, 18-year-old student Pekka-Eric Auvinen, entered the school on that morning armed with a semi-automatic pistol. He killed eight people and wounded one person in the toe before shooting himself in the head. He died later that evening in a Helsinki
Helsinki
Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...
hospital.
This was the second school shooting in the history of Finland. The previous incident occurred in 1989 at the Raumanmeri school in Rauma
Rauma, Finland
Rauma is a town and municipality of ca. inhabitants on the west coast of Finland, north of Turku, and south of Pori. Granted town privileges on May 17, 1442 , Rauma is known of its high quality lace , and of the old wooden architecture of its centre , which is a Unesco world heritage...
, when a 14-year-old fatally shot two fellow students. Less than one year after the Jokela school massacre, another school shooting occurred in Kauhajoki
Kauhajoki
Kauhajoki is a town and municipality of Finland. The city is unilingually Finnish.It is located in the province of Western Finland and is part of the Southern Ostrobothnia region. The population of Kauhajoki is and the municipality covers an area of of which is inland water...
, where a gunman shot and killed 10 people before killing himself
Kauhajoki school shooting
The Kauhajoki school shooting was a school shooting that occurred on 23 September 2008, at Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences in Kauhajoki, a city in Western Finland. The gunman, 22-year-old culinary arts student Matti Juhani Saari, shot and fatally injured ten people with a semi-automatic...
.
The massacre
At approximately 11:40 (09:40 UTCCoordinated Universal Time
Coordinated Universal Time is the primary time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time. It is one of several closely related successors to Greenwich Mean Time. Computer servers, online services and other entities that rely on having a universally accepted time use UTC for that purpose...
), Pekka-Eric Auvinen entered the school's main hallway at Jokela High School
Jokela High School
Jokela High School is a public secondary school in Jokela School Centre in the village of Jokela, Tuusula municipality, Finland. It is located 43 kilometers outside the capital Helsinki. The school educates about 450 pupils. Jokela School Center also houses grades 7–9.-School shooting:The school...
. The emergency services received the first phone call at 11:43. Most victims were later found in the entrance hallway of the school. At 11:44, school principal Helena Kalmi ordered all students and teachers to barricade themselves inside their classrooms. Kalmi then left the school administration office and tried to convince Auvinen to surrender. Auvinen shot Kalmi seven times in view of a group of students in the school yard, killing her. The school nurse later tried to help wounded students, but Auvinen killed her as well. Auvinen then began walking around the school, knocking on classroom doors. He shouted orders at some of the students, proclaimed a revolution, and urged the students to destroy school property. He also aimed his weapon at some people without shooting them. The victims sustained multiple injuries to the upper body and head. He later began pouring two-stroke engine fuel (a gasoline and oil mixture) on corridor walls and floors, but he was not able to ignite the fuel.
A police patrol vehicle arrived at 11:55, followed later by about one hundred police officers at about 12:30, including the Karhuryhmä
Karhuryhmä
The Karhu Team , officially known as Helsingin poliisilaitoksen erityistoimintayksikkö is a special operations and counter-terrorism unit of the Finnish police, equivalent to SWAT teams in the United States...
special operations unit. Even off-duty police officers arrived and surrounded the school. When the police tried to negotiate with Auvinen, he answered by firing a shot at the police at 12:04 local time. No officers were hit.
The shooting ended after 40 minutes when Auvinen shot himself in the head at 12:24. The police entered the school at 13:53. Auvinen was found in a boys' lavatory still alive but unconscious at 13:54. The police searched one room at a time for other shooters. The police were not able to secure the building until shortly before 16:00. No police officers fired their weapons.
Auvinen was taken to the Töölö
Töölö
Töölö is the collective name for the neighbourhoods Etu-Töölö and Taka-Töölö in Helsinki, Finland. The neighbourhoods are located next to the city centre, occupying the western side of the Helsinki Peninsula....
Hospital of the Helsinki University Central Hospital at 14:45 where he died at 22:15 from the self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The perpetrator
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
and full-time railroad worker, and his mother was former deputy of the Tuusula municipal council. He also had a brother seven years his junior.
He described himself in oxymoron
Oxymoron
An oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines contradictory terms...
ic terms, “a cynical
Cynicism
Cynicism , in its original form, refers to the beliefs of an ancient school of Greek philosophers known as the Cynics . Their philosophy was that the purpose of life was to live a life of Virtue in agreement with Nature. This meant rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, health, and...
existentialist
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
, antihuman
Misanthropy
Misanthropy is generalized dislike, distrust, disgust, contempt or hatred of the human species or human nature. A misanthrope, or misanthropist is someone who holds such views or feelings...
humanist
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
, antisocial social darwinist
Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism is a term commonly used for theories of society that emerged in England and the United States in the 1870s, seeking to apply the principles of Darwinian evolution to sociology and politics...
, realistic idealist
Idealism
In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...
and godlike atheist
Atheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...
” on his YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
user page Sturmgeist89. The police investigation confirmed that Auvinen was frequently bullied at school. One of his teachers described him as militant radical interested in both far-right and far-left movements. He was also interested in history and philosophy.
He had irregularly taken SSRI
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor
Selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors or serotonin-specific reuptake inhibitor are a class of compounds typically used as antidepressants in the treatment of depression, anxiety disorders, and some personality disorders. The efficacy of SSRIs is disputed...
-antidepressants one year prior to his death. These antidepressants are said to cause suicidal tendencies as a side-effect in early ages between 18 and 24.
Firearm acquisition
Auvinen had received his gun licence three weeks before the shooting. He was a registered member of the Helsinki Shooting Club. A club spokesman revealed that Auvinen had only attended a single one-hour training session. His SIG MosquitoSIG Mosquito
The SIG Mosquito is a blowback-operated, semi-automatic pistol based on the SIG Sauer P226, but 10% smaller in size and chambered for the .22LR cartridge. The pistol is manufactured with an aluminum-zinc alloy slide and polymer frame...
.22 calibre
.22 Long Rifle
The .22 Long Rifle rimfire cartridge is a long established variety of ammunition, and in terms of units sold is still by far the most common in the world today. The cartridge is often referred to simply as .22 LR and various rifles, pistols, revolvers, and even some smoothbore shotguns have...
pistol had been legally obtained and registered to Auvinen on October 19. He had been given the licence since he was a member of a local shooting club and held no previous criminal record.
The Finnish police usually require a shooting hobby to begin with a .22 calibre weapon. The police cannot mandate that sports shooting take place in a club, or even in any kind of company; in the case of relatively low risk weapons, the permit decision may be based entirely on information provided by the applicant. Membership in a shooting club is nevertheless considered a risk control. Auvinen himself wanted to purchase a Beretta
Beretta
Fabbrica d'Armi Pietro Beretta is an Italian firearms manufacturer. Their firearms are used worldwide for a variety of civilian, law enforcement, and military purposes. It is also known for manufacturing shooting clothes and accessories. Beretta is the oldest active firearms manufacturer in the...
9 mm pistol, but the application was rejected by police.
Videos and writings
Pekka-Eric Auvinen uploaded a home-made video entitled “Jokela High School Massacre – 11/7/2007” to YouTube announcing the “massacre” hours prior to the shooting. KMFDMKMFDM
KMFDM is an industrial band led by German multi-instrumentalist Sascha Konietzko, who founded the group in 1984 as a performance art project...
's “Stray Bullet” was used as background music. Videos of him shooting his new gun had been uploaded weeks prior to the shooting. Several hours after the event, YouTube suspended some videos belonging to the user account Sturmgeist89 and Naturalselector89 due to relations with the shootings. His previous YouTube account name was “naturalselector89”, which he used from March until it was suspended in October. Many of his videos were about other shootings and violent incidents, including the Columbine High School massacre
Columbine High School massacre
The Columbine High School massacre occurred on Tuesday, April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, an unincorporated area of Jefferson County, Colorado, United States, near Denver and Littleton. Two senior students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, embarked on a massacre, killing 12...
, the Waco Siege
Waco Siege
The Waco siege began on February 28, 1993, and ended violently 50 days later on April 19. The siege began when the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms attempted to execute a search warrant at the Branch Davidian ranch at Mount Carmel, a property located east-northeast of Waco,...
, the Tokyo sarin gas attack
Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway
The Sarin attack on the Tokyo subway, usually referred to in the Japanese media as the , was an act of domestic terrorism perpetrated by members of Aum Shinrikyo on March 20, 1995....
, and bombing during the Iraq invasion
2003 invasion of Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq , was the start of the conflict known as the Iraq War, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 21 days of major combat operations...
.
According to his Manifesto, his motivation was alienation and contempt for humanity. Auvinen was disillusioned with democracy, writing "Democracy is a dictatorship of the moral majority... and the majority is manipulated and ruled by the state mafia", as well as the "devolution" of the human race due to "stupid , weak-minded people...reproducing more and faster than the intelligent, strong-minded people". He stated that he was hoping to inspire a revolution of the “small minority of strong-minded and intelligent individuals” against the “idiocracy“ of the “weak-minded masses”. He asserted that he did not want anything or anyone to be blamed for the shooting, and that he had planned it “in [his] own head”. He left a media package on Rapidshare
RapidShare
RapidShare is a one-click hosting service that offers both free and commercial services. Operating from Switzerland, it is financed by the subscriptions of paying users...
, a hosting site, explaining his actions and his motives for the shooting. It includes details of the attack, a manifesto, his “loves & hates”, some images of himself and a video of him firing a handgun. “I am prepared to fight and die for my cause”, read a posting by Sturmgeist. “I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see unfit, disgraces of human race and failures of natural selection.” “Sturmgeist” means storm spirit in German.
Although most of the original videos and files have been removed Auvinen's media package can still be found on the internet.
Several newspapers have suggested similarities between and inspirations for Auvinen's actions in the Columbine shootings. Auvinen's YouTube videos included footage related to Columbine. The KMFDM track used in his video, “Stray Bullet”, was also used on the website of Columbine shooter Eric Harris
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
Eric David Harris and Dylan Bennet Klebold were American high school seniors who committed the Columbine High School massacre. They killed 13 people—including teacher Dave Sanders—and injured 24 others, three of whom were injured as they escaped the attack...
.
Criminal investigation
The police found 76 shells and hundreds of rounds of ammunition at the scene. Flammable liquid was found poured on the walls and floors of the second floor, suggesting that Auvinen had attempted to set the school on fire. They also found Auvinen's suicide noteSuicide note
A suicide note or death note is a message that states the author has died by suicide, and left to be discovered and read in anticipation of suicide....
and began analysing his Internet postings.
A spokesman for the cyber crime department of Helsinki police has stated that “it's highly probable that there was some form of contact between Pekka-Eric Auvinen and” Dillon Cossey, the 14-year-old boy arrested in October on suspicion of planning an attack on his school in a suburb of Philadelphia.
A 2,000-page police report into the shooting was released in April 2008.
Responses to the incident
Finland – FlagsFlag of Finland
The flag of Finland , also called Siniristilippu , dates from the beginning of the 20th century. On a white background, it features a blue Nordic cross, which represents Christianity. The state flag has a coat of arms in the centre, but is otherwise identical to the civil flag. The swallow-tailed...
were flown at half-staff
Half-staff
Half-staff is the American term for to describe a flag flying a flag below the summit of the flagpole . The rest of the English-speaking world uses the term half-mast. Technically the flag should be flown one breadth lower to allow for the invisible flag of death...
on Thursday, November 8, 2007 throughout the country by officials and private entities alike and the Finnish government
Finnish Council of State
The Cabinet of Finland is the body that directs the Government of Finland. However, in governmental translations to English, the distinction is often blurred between cabinet and government in the wider sense...
held a moment of silence while in session. The Prime Minister
Prime Minister of Finland
The Prime Minister is the Head of Government of Finland. The Prime Minister is appointed by the President, who is the Head of State. The current Prime Minister is Jyrki Katainen of the National Coalition Party.-Overview:...
, Matti Vanhanen
Matti Vanhanen
Matti Taneli Vanhanen is a Finnish politician. He is a former Prime Minister of Finland and a former Chairman of the Centre Party. In the second half of 2006 he was President of the European Council. In his earlier career he was a journalist...
sent "his government's heartfelt condolences", strongly noting the need of the media, the parents and the schools to discuss the incident in correct light. The Finnish National Board of Education immediately posted directions for the teachers and principals on how to discuss the shootings with pupils, alongside with shorter instructions for parents. President
President of Finland
The President of the Republic of Finland is the nation's head of state. Under the Finnish constitution, executive power is vested in the President and the government, with the President possessing extensive powers. The President is elected directly by the people of Finland for a term of six years....
Tarja Halonen
Tarja Halonen
Tarja Kaarina Halonen is the incumbent President of Finland. The first female to hold the office, Halonen had previously been a member of the parliament from 1979 to 2000 when she resigned after her election to the presidency...
sent her condolences as well. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland
Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland
The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland is the national church of Finland. The church professes the Lutheran branch of Christianity, and is a member of the Porvoo Communion....
has opened a crisis center, situated in the Church of Jokela, in which professional help is administered to those afflicted by the tragedy.
The Lutheran Archbishop Jukka Paarma
Jukka Paarma
Jukka Paarma was the Archbishop of Turku and Finland, and the spiritual head of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland. He retired as Archbishop on June 1, 2010.-References:...
of Turku, the Orthodox Archbishop Leo of Karelia, the Catholic Bishop Józef Wróbel of Helsinki and other church authorities have expressed their condolences to the relatives and loved ones of those who died in the massacre. Throughout the country, church buildings have been open for anyone seeking pastoral care; the incident has also been a major topic in religious services, many of which have been specifically held because of the incident.
On 9 November 2007, the Finnish government decided to drop objections to the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
directive on firearms. This will likely mandate a common European minimum age limit of 18 years for gun ownership. After the decision was announced, interior minister
Interior minister
An interior ministry is a government ministry typically responsible for policing, national security, and immigration matters. The ministry is often headed by a minister of the interior or minister of home affairs...
Anne Holmlund
Anne Holmlund
Anne Elisabeth Holmlund is a Finnish politician and Interior Minister of Finland since 2007 until 2011. She has been a Member of Parliament for the National Coalition Party since 2002.-Political career:...
commented through her aide that it wasn't a direct consequence of the shootings, as the directive had been prepared for a long time and "wouldn't have prevented the events anyway."
On 13 November 2007, the Finnish Government announced that it would set up a "Commission of Inquiry to investigate the Jokela school shooting and events that bear relevance to the incident". The investigation report was released in February 2009.
According to the Finnish Ministry of Justice, a legislative process aimed at establishing an enabling Act covering the Terms of an official Investigative Commission would be finalized by the end of March 2008. The plan is to have a Final Report, covering the Jokela school shooting incident, finalized in one year.
Estonia
Estonia
Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...
– President
President of Estonia
The President of the Republic is the head of state of the Republic of Estonia.Estonia is a parliamentary republic, therefore President is mainly a symbolic figure and holds no executive power. The President has to suspend his membership in any political party for his term in office...
Toomas Hendrik Ilves
Toomas Hendrik Ilves
Toomas Hendrik Ilves is the fourth and current President of Estonia. He is a former diplomat and journalist, was the leader of the Social Democratic Party in the 1990s and later a member of the European Parliament...
sent a message of condolences on behalf of the Estonian people to President Halonen, saying he had been shocked and saddened by the news.
Iceland
Iceland
Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...
– President
President of Iceland
The President of Iceland is Iceland's elected head of state. The president is elected to a four-year term by universal adult suffrage and has limited powers. The president is not the head of government; the Prime Minister of Iceland is the head of government. There have been five presidents since...
Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson
Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson
Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson is the fifth and current President of Iceland. He has served as President since 1996; he was unopposed in 2000, re-elected for a third term in 2004, and re-elected unopposed for a fourth term in 2008. He is the longest-serving left-wing president in the history of...
sent a message of condolences on behalf of the Icelandic people to Finnish President Tarja Halonen. “On the behalf of me and the Icelandic people, I wish to express our condolences to the Finnish people for the tragic event in Tuusula earlier today.”
Ireland – President
President of Ireland
The President of Ireland is the head of state of Ireland. The President is usually directly elected by the people for seven years, and can be elected for a maximum of two terms. The presidency is largely a ceremonial office, but the President does exercise certain limited powers with absolute...
Mary McAleese
Mary McAleese
Mary Patricia McAleese served as the eighth President of Ireland from 1997 to 2011. She was the second female president and was first elected in 1997 succeeding Mary Robinson, making McAleese the world's first woman to succeed another as president. She was re-elected unopposed for a second term in...
, Taoiseach
Taoiseach
The Taoiseach is the head of government or prime minister of Ireland. The Taoiseach is appointed by the President upon the nomination of Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Oireachtas , and must, in order to remain in office, retain the support of a majority in the Dáil.The current Taoiseach is...
Bertie Ahern
Bertie Ahern
Patrick Bartholomew "Bertie" Ahern is a former Irish politician who served as Taoiseach of Ireland from 26 June 1997 to 7 May 2008....
and a number of Irish schoolchildren expressed their condolences to Finnish President Tarja Halonen on November 12 during Halonen's state visit
State visit
A state visit is a formal visit by a foreign head of state to another nation, at the invitation of that nation's head of state. State visits are the highest form of diplomatic contact between two nations, and are marked by ceremonial pomp and diplomatic protocol. In parliamentary democracies, heads...
to the country.
Norway – King Harald V sent a message of condolences to Finnish President Tarja Halonen. “It is with deep sorrow that I have received the news of the tragic of the Jokela secondary school in Tusby yesterday, which resulted in such a meaningless loss of lives. I send you my heartfelt condolences and my sincerest sympathies to all the bereaved and the Finnish people.”
Sweden – King
Monarch of Sweden
The monarchy of Sweden is the constitutional monarchy of the Kingdom of Sweden. The present monarch, Carl XVI Gustaf, has reigned since 15 September 1973. He and his immediate family undertake various official, ceremonial and representational duties...
Carl XVI Gustaf
Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden
Carl XVI Gustaf is the reigning King of Sweden since 15 September 1973, succeeding his grandfather King Gustaf VI Adolf because his father had predeceased him...
expressed his condolences and described the shooting as a horrific affair.
"Unfortunately this sort of thing is spreading around the world. That is odd," the king added at a news conference in Luleå
Luleå
- Transportation :Local buses are run by .A passenger train service is available from Luleå Centralstation on Sweden's national SJ railway service northbound to Narvik on the Norwegian coast, or southbound to Stockholm. See Rail transport in Sweden....
. The Swedish TV-channel SVT 2 would also show the movie Elephant the day after the massacre but they took it off the schedule in respect to Finland. Instead, the movie Swimming Pool
Swimming Pool (film)
Swimming Pool is a 2003 thriller film directed by François Ozon and starring Charlotte Rampling and Ludivine Sagnier. The plot focuses on a British crime novelist, Sarah Morton, who travels to her publisher's upscale summer house in Southern France for solitude to work on her next book...
was shown.
European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
– President of the European Commission
European Commission
The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union....
José Manuel Barroso said in a message to the Finnish prime minister Matti Vanhanen
Matti Vanhanen
Matti Taneli Vanhanen is a Finnish politician. He is a former Prime Minister of Finland and a former Chairman of the Centre Party. In the second half of 2006 he was President of the European Council. In his earlier career he was a journalist...
that he had been "shocked and profoundly saddened to learn about the horrific campus murders."
In Finland
On November 9, 2007, the Finnish police rushed to three schools due to threats of attacks posted on the Internet. One of the schools was Hyrylä high school in Tuusula and the others in KirkkonummiKirkkonummi
Kirkkonummi is a municipality of inhabitants in southern Finland. The literal meaning of the words "Kirkkonummi" and "Kyrkslätt" in English is "church moor"....
and Maaninka
Maaninka
Maaninka is a municipality of Finland.It is located in the province of Eastern Finland and is part of the Northern Savonia region. The municipality has a population of and covers an area of ofwhich is water. The population density is....
. The 16-year-old boy who posted a video titled "Maaninka massacre" on YouTube was arrested on November 11. The suspect has stated that the video was a joke.
Three weeks after the Jokela shootings, the Finnish police, flooded with hoax threats, made a public plea for threats against schools to cease. The police reminded prospective perpetrators of severe judicial consequences as well as of the feelings of the families touched by the Jokela events.
The Kauhajoki school shooting
Kauhajoki school shooting
The Kauhajoki school shooting was a school shooting that occurred on 23 September 2008, at Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences in Kauhajoki, a city in Western Finland. The gunman, 22-year-old culinary arts student Matti Juhani Saari, shot and fatally injured ten people with a semi-automatic...
was a school shooting that occurred on 23 September 2008, at Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences in Kauhajoki, a city in Western Finland. The gunman, 22-year-old culinary arts student Matti Juhani Saari, shot and fatally injured ten people with a semi-automatic pistol, before shooting himself in the head. He died a few hours later in Tampere University Hospital. Finnish police first stated that Saari "very likely" knew Pekka-Eric Auvinen, but in the final investigation no proof of that was found.
Elsewhere
In neighbouring Sweden, two boys, aged 16 and 17, were arrested in StockholmStockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
for conspiring to murder their school's principal and janitor. According to the principal, "they had spoken about and glorified Columbine High and what happened in Finland."
See also
- Gun politics in FinlandGun politics in FinlandIn Finland there are 32 privately owned firearms per 100 civilians according to the Finnish Ministry of the Interior. By the end of 2006 there were more than 1.6 million licensed firearms. Averaged among Finland's population of 5.3 million it comes to 30.5 per 100 people...
- List of school-related attacks
- List of events named massacres
- Kauhajoki school shootingKauhajoki school shootingThe Kauhajoki school shooting was a school shooting that occurred on 23 September 2008, at Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences in Kauhajoki, a city in Western Finland. The gunman, 22-year-old culinary arts student Matti Juhani Saari, shot and fatally injured ten people with a semi-automatic...
- Sello mall shootingSello mall shootingThe Sello mall shooting occurred on the morning of 31 December 2009 shortly after 10:08 local time at the Sello Prisma hypermarket in Leppävaara district of Espoo, Finland. The shooting was believed to have been started after Ibrahim Shkupolli, the alleged gunman, found that his ex-girlfriend had a...
- Sanna SillanpääSanna SillanpääSanna Riitta Liisa Sillanpää is a Finnish woman, who shot three men to death with a rented pistol on 21 February 1999 in a shooting club on Albertinkatu, Helsinki, and wounded another man, who received lifetime injuries. One man present was not harmed...
External links
- Auvinen's home videos, originally distributed on YouTube, can now be found on a number of sites: 1, 2
- Auvinen's media pack (1, 2)
- The media pack as it was originally distributed (zip)
- Official school website
- Material produced by the shooter
- Crime scene photos (in Finnish)