back to article Finnish school gunman posted warning on YouTube

A pupil at a Finnish high school reportedly posted a video manifesto onto YouTube before killing seven people and injuring several others this morning. The incident happened 50km north of Helsinki and the alleged gunman was a pupil at the school, the BBC reports. The 18-year-old alleged gunman was arrested following a siege at …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I can hear it now...

    I can hear the chants in the background from religious people "OMG, 'Natural selector'... Darwin made him do this, evolution is evil!".

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I can see the US headlines.....

    YouTube causes death of Finnish students at hands of computer mad gunman

  3. Dave
    Thumb Down

    Poor Finns

    So sad to see a good country get Amerikanized. What's next? McDonalds?

  4. Anonmouse

    This is the first

    @dave

    This is the first such incident ever in Finland.

    And this is with country that has guns per capita ratio that is quite close to US. So it's not that bad.

    I just hope that this does not become the fashionable way of flipping out.

    The traditional Finnish way is to get drunk and stab someone, or just hang yourself

  5. Bill L
    Mars

    Yeah, but the US has 300 million residents. How many does Finland have?

    A nation with so many fewer bad apples would, of course come up with a malicious type of jackpot later and less often than the over a quarter billion of us in "the states".

    I'm not judging Finland's laws, politics, or people. I'm just saying a lower number of people equals fewer nutcakes, everything else being equal.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Free publicity only encourages it

    It is pretty obvious that this killing is a clone of the Virginia Tech university shooting - though not as well prepared.

    The use of Youtube or internet to post the manifesto is very similar.

    I honestly believe that publication of the gory details and massive repeating on TV, Radio and Internet of excerpts of the 'manifesto' and the money shots provided by the perp creates a climate where some people on the edge are propelled into doing their version.

    As you watch TV or read papers in the next few days look how the media outlets compete with each other to show more and more shots, repeating them ad-nausem till they cease to have a ratings or sales value. There is nothing of value in this to anyone other than media owners and wannabe mass murderers.

    Now consider what would happen if such manifestos, photos and personal testaments of mass murderers were put in the same category as child pornography with reproduction and distribution banned and heavy penalties applicable.

    We would at least be spared the endless shock horror treatment by our ever responsible media. More importantly, perhaps a few disturbed individuals would not be inspired to get their own slice of immortal fame by repeating and exceeding the activity.

  7. Dark Fade
    Dead Vulture

    Updates

    According to the latest news, the body count is eight (including the headmistress of the school, and more than a dozen people have been hospitalised.

    The previous case of a shooting incident in Finland was in 1989 in Rauma, when a 9th grader shot two students after a long period of depression resulting from harassment.

    School stabbings we have every few years, quite periodically somewhere between once in three to four years. Apparently there haven't been any casualties resulting from these incidents.

    Have to say, the informations spread throughout the nation in a matter of hours, and now I can only imagine the headlines of tomorrow, as everything of Pekka-Eric Auvinen's life will be torn apart by the media, politicians using the incident to promote their own agenda, and no one to wonder after the budget cuts in the sectors of health care and student maintenance.

    The media coverage of this particular case has reached an unreasonable measure, with still nothing worth saying. The people, who take up this case and write the headlines of "He was such a normal person!" "Friends and family grieve" "This is the murderer's mother", should be considered lapidable, worthy of being stoned.

    Hope we'll see a brighter tomorrow with our upcoming revolutionary youth laws in terms of improved social personnel and facilities.

    -Pauli Teinonen

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No Darwin Award For This One.

    And creationism has a lot of ground to cover to overcome a nation where everyone past elementary school knows evolution as a truth. If some smart one decides to connect neo-nazism and Darwinism, which would probably come from some American front, there'd be a pretty slim argument visible.

    "The shooter believed in Darwinism. He was a neo-nazi. Shooting at schools is bad. Nazis are bad. Therefore Darwinism is bad and leads to massacres."

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Updating

    Nine casualties, now including the shooter's passing after a self-inflicted shot in the head.

  10. David

    Some smart one?

    Oh but the argument that evolution *must* lead to total amorality & hence to school shootings has been made many times since Columbine by certain people, of course the fact that the odious Mr Harris banged on about natural selection at such length didn't help matters. BTW based on what has been published thus far of this kid's rantings, it seems likely he was another disturbed boy (like, say, Jeff Weise) who saw Eric Harris as a role model, all the stuff about killing those one deems unfit for life, waging a war against society, viewing most folk as retards unworthy of life, oh and asserting that 'no one is to blame but me', I'm doing natural selections work etc etc are little more than direct quotations from 'Reb'. Could just be a case of twisted minds thinking alike I suppose...

  11. John A Blackley

    Sad

    My condolences to all of those who lost loved ones at Tuusula and to people who, by having lost loved ones in similar circumstances in the past, have their grief revived by this one.

    My sadness at those here who chose to use this sad event only as an excuse to vent their bigotry about the United States.

  12. Jason Togneri
    Unhappy

    @ Anonmouse

    Yes this is the first school-based incident in Finland, but this is not the first such student incident - back in 2002 there was the Myyrmäki bombing, where a 17-year-old student detonated a home-made bomb in a shopping centre ("mall"), and it seems, blowing himself up by accident. Anyway, it is certainly sad to hear about this - it's only 30km away from where I live - and shocking to hear of its happening at all, in this normally peaceful country of just five million, where the news often consists of horror stories such as "Police forced to tranquilise bear to remove it from motorway". A black day indeed.

  13. Cormac

    @ Bill L

    finland is 5 milliion residents,

    so ya a bit different from states..

    I just going to move to tuusula aswell ......

    I fint it strange no one had spoted that video on you tube fefore the event identified the studant and arrested him before it happened , but saying that its really unusuall for somthing like that to happen .. usually the depresed ones here in finland throw them selfs in front of trains ....

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    Those vids removed from YouTube

    Can be found here: http://kimmo.org/jokela/ - for now, at least.

  15. Trevor Watt
    Thumb Down

    Alleged shooter?

    The guy is dead, since when was it possible to liable a dead man? Nothing alleged about it, he was seen doing it and he then killed himself.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Blackley

    Aw diddums, so nobody likes you, tough shit. That's what happens to the playground bullies. And to draw out the anology further bullying only makes you less popular.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wouldn't it just be easier...

    ...if these sad bastards just wandered off somewhere quiet and topped themselves?

    I mean, that's what the vast majority do in the end.

    Why take a number of others with you, when your game plan is simply to die?

    What's the attraction in taking other people with you I wonder - if you are going to die yourself?

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    On the boring evolution debate

    "Brother, you can believe in stones - as long as you don't throw them at me."

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re: Wouldn't it just be easier...

    >Why take a number of others with you, when your game plan is simply to die?

    >What's the attraction in taking other people with you I wonder -

    >if you are going to die yourself?

    I think the nut-job in question explained that he hated everyone.

    There are a couple of issues that seem to hijack stories with the most tenuous connections, evolution and copyright. Can't you just bottle these up until something relevant comes along?

    Oh spelling and grammar is another....

    Liable & Libel.

    As in you can't libel a dead man, although some are liable to libel a live one.

    Don't get me started on Ensure/Insure or Affect/Effect.

  20. tim

    He said not blame his films, or video games

    but maybe it was because he was blessed with the name of Pekka?

  21. Marco

    Videogames

    How long until it is pronounced that a copy of "Counterstrike" was found in his room?

  22. Dark Fade
    Dead Vulture

    Everything Irrelevant Wiped Out, Media and Politics Left.

    ----

    The Myyrmäki-incident was concluded as an accident, the student only passing through the shopping centre with an improvised explosive device, which accidentally detonated. Most apparently he was headed for the woods nearby to try out new generation of home-made explosives. If it were planned as a suicide, he most likely wouldn't have held back in his materials, as he had a nice stockpile of necessities for the urban terrorist, and would have assembled a much larger device; which would have claimed more casualties.

    ----

    Actually he played BF2, but that's beside the point.

    ----

    The fact that makes this particular case interesting is that it closed itself most effectively. There's nothing active about the case, since the actual killer is dead, together with the second-in-blame, the headmistress. Pekka-Eric's friends contacted the head about their worry about the mental state of the upcoming shooter, but the now-dead headmistress didn't see any potential threat in the straight-10 student. Most apparently she was wrong.

    The only dimensions left open with the case are those of media and politics. As I earlier criticised the media's pointless sensationism, the political one remained untouched. The to-be pack of youth laws contain points on the facilities and requirements for student maintenance, psychiatric services, social workers and the like, and has been left for the Parliament to consider. If this very case highlights the points with necessity, Pekka-Eric may have unwillingly saved hundreds of lives in the future, avoiding casualties related to mental problems.

    I can quite securely state that the municipal of Tuusula will take the tragic incident very seriously, and this would be one of the first places to implement the new laws, and for once take care of their future growing up in educational institutions.

    Of course, one could wonder why the new legislation didn't come any earlier, for example five years ago.

    -Pauli Teinonen

  23. Asfand Yar Qazi
    Flame

    Ah, how the desire to express ourselves drives us....

    Evolution. Anti-meta-physicists state "it is fact". Spiritualists state "it is nonsense". It is nothing more than a vague simplified approximation of the infinitely complex mathematically defined particle interactions and state changes that have defined history as it is. Is any approximation ever totally correct? No. So why do we use approximations in our attempt to understand how things work? Because they are easier for our limited intellects to understand. Neither side picks up on this point.

    Another point is: if a "Muslim" was to do this, it'd automatically be branded "A Terrorist attack by an extreme fanatical fundamentalist jihadist interpretation against our values and beliefs and basic human rights and freedom and liberty and etc etc." Regardless of things others have said, I don't think the idea on which his beliefs were formed will be scapegoated similarly.

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