Czech mass shooting: Gunman confessed to shooting baby in woods

28 December 2023 10:11

The gunman who killed 14 people at a university in Prague confessed to an earlier double murder in his suicide note, Czech police have said.

The note found in David Kozak's home contained a confession he had shot dead a man and his baby daughter in woods near the city on 15 December, six days before the Charles University attack, reports BBC.

Police said he had been on a list of 4,000 suspects for their murders.

Kozak also killed his father, bringing the total number of his victims to 17.

The attack at the university on 21 December is the worst mass shooting in Czech history.

Kozak, a 24-year-old masters history student at the university, killed himself after being surrounded by armed police.

As first reported in the newspaper Denik N, the note was discovered by police in Kozak's home on 21 December - the same day as the attack.

It contained a confession he had shot dead the pair in Klanovice woods on the eastern outskirts of the capital a week previously.

The victims are reported to be a 32-year-old man and a two-month-old girl, according to Czech media.

Detectives had said it was "highly probable" that the gunman had also carried out the Klanovice killings. This was later confirmed by ballistics.

They said Kozak had been on a long list of potential suspects whom they wanted to interview and expressed regret they had been unable to get to him earlier.

A woman mourns outside the building of Philosophical Faculty of Charles University following a mass shooting earlier this week, on December 23, 2023 in Prague, Czech Republic. — A vigil last Saturday outside the university

Last week's attack at the university centred on the Faculty of Arts building on Jan Palach Square, where Kozak was seen opening fire with a rifle from the rooftop.

University staff and students were told to barricade themselves in during the attack.

Thirteen people died at the university, while a fourteenth victim died from their injuries in hospital. A further 25 people were wounded, police said.

Police have not released the possible motive for the killings, saying the investigation is ongoing.

Czech Interior Minister Vit Rakusan has called on the mayors of all towns and villages to cancel New Year's fireworks displays in light of the massacre.

On social media, he called on all Czechs to mark the event in a peaceful fashion, saying it was the least the nation could do for those traumatised by the killings.

The attack at the university had one of the largest death tolls of any mass shooting by a lone gunman in Europe this century:

Norway, July 2011 Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people by planting a car bomb that killed eight at an Oslo government building and then shooting dead 69 more, most of them teenagers, at an island summer camp run by the ruling Labour Party's youth wing
Germany, April 2002 Robert Steinhauser, 19, killed 16 people - 13 teachers, two pupils, and a policemen - at the Gutenberg Gymnasium secondary school in the city of Erfurt. He had been expelled from the school the previous autumn
Germany, March 2009 Tim Kretschmer, 17, killed 15 people in a shooting that began at his former school in the town of Winnenden, near Stuttgart. He shot dead nine students and three teachers at the school before going on to the nearby town of Wendlingen, where he shot another three passers-by.
Switzerland, September 2001 Friedrich Leibacher entered the regional parliament building in the city of Zug dressed in a police uniform and shot dead 14 people and injured another 10
Serbia, April 2013 Ljubisa Bogdanovic shot dead thirteen people, including a two-year-old boy, and injured his wife in a village outside Belgrade. Bogdanovic was a military veteran who had fought with Serb forces in the Croatian War of Independence in the early 1990s.