14-Year-Old Russian Girl Shoots Self, Classmate Dead

On Thursday, a Russian teenager shot a classmate and injured five others before taking her own life in a school near the Ukrainian border in Bryansk, according to investigators.

Incidents of school shootings are infrequent in Russia, a country with stringent gun laws, but they have seen an increase in occurrence in recent years.

“A 14-year-old girl brought a pump-action shotgun to school, which she used to shoot her classmates. As a result, two died — one of them the shooter — and there are five wounded,” the Investigative Committee said in a statement.

While authorities refrained from disclosing the identity of the shooter, they revealed that the victim was a female classmate at the secondary school located in the Bryansk suburb.

“The motives behind the crime and all the circumstances are being established,” said the Instigative Committee, which probes major crimes.

As reported, the five individuals who sustained injuries were promptly transported to medical facilities.

The incident occurred at Gymnasium Number Five, situated on the outskirts of Bryansk, a city near Ukraine that has experienced intermittent shelling and drone attacks.

Notably, in September of the previous year, a gunman claimed the lives of 18 people at a school in the western Russian city of Izhevsk.

In 2021, a 19-year-old shooter took the lives of nine individuals at a school in Kazan, located in Tatarstan. During that same year, a teenager was responsible for the deaths of six people at a university in the Urals city of Perm.