Vigils held in Graz and country enters period of mourning as details of 21-year-old former pupil’s bomb plot emerge
A 21-year-old former student who shot dead 10 people including pupils and a teacher at his former school in Austria before killing himself had planned to detonate a homemade explosive at the site, police have said.
As the small Alpine country came to a standstill to remember the dead, security officials said on Wednesday that the gunman, named in local media as Arthur A, had built a pipe bomb, but had then “discarded plans to use it” in his attack on Tuesday in Graz. He told his parents in a suicide note that he had acted of his “own free will”.
The young man, who had left the school two years ago without completing his studies, had apologised to his parents and older siblings but had not disclosed a motive for his attack, officials said.
The shooting – the worst in Austria’s postwar history – took place in 17 minutes on Tuesday morning, just after the start of the third lesson of the day. Many children were sitting exams at the time. Eyewitnesses described how the perpetrator had fired through classroom doors using a shotgun, subsequently shooting at victims with a pistol. Pupils were told by teachers to lie flat on the floor and to barricade themselves in rooms, using chairs to block the doors.
