A 10-year-old student was killed in a stabbing attack at a school in the affluent Moscow-region suburb of Gorki-2 on Tuesday morning, local authorities said.
Police said they received a report around 9 a.m. local time that a student had attacked a security guard at Uspenskaya Secondary School and then fatally stabbed a fourth-grader.
“Tragically, a fourth-grade student has lost his life,” Ksenia Mishonova, the Moscow region’s children’s ombudswoman, wrote on Telegram.
The injured security guard’s condition was not immediately clear.
Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said it had launched a murder investigation and was working to establish the circumstances of the attack.
The mother of a friend of the victim described him as “a very good boy” who was “very calm.”
The suspected assailant, a 15-year-old ninth-grade student, was taken into custody for questioning, police said. Images shared on social media appeared to show the teenager being arrested by heavily armed and masked law enforcement agents.
Telegram channels with links to Russia’s security services published images they claimed were taken by the suspected assailant at the scene of the knife attack inside the school.
According to unconfirmed reports, photos found on his phone allegedly contained “extremist quotes” and names of far-right organizations, as well as references to the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings in New Zealand.
Law enforcement officials have not commented on those reports.
Teachers told state-run media that the suspected assailant had good grades and studied “without any complaints,” but had recently started missing classes at school.
The attack at Uspenskaya Secondary School came a day after police in St. Petersburg arrested a ninth-grade student accused of stabbing and injuring a teacher following a dispute over a bad grade.
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