Teen gun killer sought to be 'a God'
A student who shot and killed eight people and himself at a school in Finland last year planned the attack for months, wanting to create "massive destruction and chaos," police said Thursday. The 18-year-old gunman described himself as a demigod in diary entries released as part of a 2,000-page police report into the high-school massacre that shocked this quiet Nordic nation on November 7. Pekka-Eric Auvinen chose his victims randomly, killing eight people within 15 minutes in a rampage that he foreshadowed in Internet postings a half-hour before the attack. The killings, at Jokela High School in Tuusula, 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Helsinki, prompted calls for stricter gun laws, bans on violent Web sites and clamp downs on teasing in schools. "In the best case, this (attack) would create massive destruction and chaos, or even a revolution," Auvinen wrote in diary entries cited by the police report. "In any case, I want this to be remembered forever. Maybe I'll even have a follower; after all, I am a super-person, almost God." Described as a shy loner by fellow students, Auvinen had been teased at school and occasionally took medication for anxiety, police said. He was an avid Web surfer and visited sites promoting violence. Police said Auvinen had expected to die in the attack, which he named "Main Strike," and had planned it for at least eight months. They did not know why he chose the particular date of the massacre. Auvinen had no previous criminal record and belonged to a shooting club in Helsinki. He shot his victims with a .22-caliber pistol he bought from a local gun store days before the attack. Police said he had settled for the pistol after being denied a license for a 9mm semiautomatic handgun. The police report said Auvinen had been engaged in e-mail correspondence with about 10 people, both in Finland and abroad, in the months before the attack. The report was based on Auvinen's Internet use, handwritten diary entries and interviews with family, friends and acquaintances. Among his Web contacts was U.S. teenager Dillon Cossey, who was sentenced last year to up to seven years in a juvenile facility after admitting a plan to attack the school near Philadelphia. The two teens communicated online about the 1999 Columbine school massacre in Colorado, in which 15 people were killed, and exchanged videos they found on the Internet. Auvinen posted several video clips on the Internet before the attack, including one titled "Jokela High School Massacre" which showed a picture of the school and two photos of him holding a handgun. Less than 15 minutes after shutting down his computer, he fired his first shot. Within 15 minutes he had fired 75 shots, killing six students, a school nurse and the principal. He shot several times at the heads and upper torsos of the victims, police said. Two hours later, officers found him unconscious in a school toilet, having shot himself in the head. He died hours later in hospital. |
