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A teenager ran amok in his school, killing seven fellow pupils and the headmistress, before shooting himself. Hours before the massacre, the 18-year-old posted a chilling message on YouTube warning what he was about to do.
As more than a dozen other pupils from the Joleka High School in southern Finland were treated in hospital for gunshot wounds, shocked witnesses told how the 18-year-old gunman had clinically walked from classroom to classroom selecting his victims before pumping bullets into them as terrified other pupils jumped for their lives from windows.
Hours earlier the unidentified pupil had posted the last of a series of messages on the internet outlining his sickening plans to "eliminate all who I see unfit."
Wearing a black T-shirt proclaiming "Humanity is Overrated", the short haired teenager is seen brandishing a handgun which he points straight into the camera.
The YouTube video, set to a hard-driving song called "Stray Bullet", and entitled "Joleka High School Massacre - 11/7/2007" shows a still photo of a low building that appears to be the 400-pupil school in Tuusula, a town with a population of 35,000 some 40 miles from the Finnish capital Helsinki.
The photo breaks apart to reveal a red-tinted picture of a man pointing a handgun into the screen. It is posted by a user called Sturmgeist89 - Sturmgeist means storm spirit in German. He describes himself as "a social darwinist."
"I am prepared to fight and die for my cause," Sturmgeist declares, "I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see unfit, disgraces of human race and failures of natural selection."
Giving his name as Pekka-Eric Auvinen, he says his weapon of choice will be a semi-automatic .22 pistol and that his targets are "students and faculty, society, humanity, human race."
Police would not comment on whether Auvinen was the gunman's real name.
Hours after posting his last message it appeared the teenager carried out his threat and, shot dead the school's principal and five male and two female pupils, before shouting "This is the start of the revolution" and shooting himself in the head.
The teenage gunman was pronounced dead from a gunshot wound to his head at Toolo Hospital in central Helsinki, where he had been taken in critical condition after the shooting.
Tuomas Hulkkonen, a student at the school, said he knew the gunman well, and that he had been acting strange of late.
"He withdrew into his shell. I had noticed a change in him just recently, and I thought that perhaps he was a bit depressed, or something, but I couldn't imagine that in reality he would do anything like this," Hulkkonen told Finnish TV station MTV3.
Teacher Kim Kiuru said : "He (the gunman) was moving systematically through the school hallways, knocking on the doors and shooting through the doors.
"It felt unreal, a pupil I have taught myself was running towards me, screaming, a pistol in his hand."
He said the said the first he knew of the incident was when the head announced over the public address system just before noon (1000GMT) that all students should remain in their classrooms.
"I stayed in the corridor to listen to more instructions, having locked my classroom door.
"After that I saw the gunman running with what appeared to be a small-calibre handgun in his hand through the doors toward me, after which I escaped to the corridor downstairs and ran in the opposite direction."
He said he saw a woman's body as he fled the building.
"Then my pupils shouted at me out of the windows to ask what they should do and I told them to jump out of the windows... and all my pupils were saved."
Several times the gunman is said to have stopped to reload his pistol. Some told how he fired clutching the gun in both hands and raised it in front of his face.
As police marksmen surrounded the school and anxious parents waited nearby for news, pupils, aged 12-18, were evacuated to shelter behind a protective wall.
Outside a church community building close by, a mother waited as a Red Cross bus pulled up outside. She watched children stepping off the bus and burst into tears when, through a window, she spotted her child, unharmed.
The shootings are the first such incidents in Finnish history - previous school confrontations have involved knives at worst and no one has died.
Despite having the world's third-largest per capita handgun ownership, violent incidents are rare at Finnish schools.
Police chief Matti Tohkanen said the gunman had obtained a licence for his pistol on October 19 and had no previous criminal record.
"He was from an ordinary family," he added.
"This is a peaceful place, nothing like this has happened in the past and nothing like this is to be expected either," Tuusula mayor Hannu Joensivusaid.
Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen described the situation as "extremely tragic" and said the government would hold an emergency meeting.
One theory last night that the killer had been "inspired" by the Columbine school massacre in the United States in 1999 that left 12 pupils and a teacher dead.
Songs by the band KMFDM, including "Stray Bullet", were found on the website of one of the student killers, Eric Harris.
The Finnish killer is said to have been fascinated by the Bond bad-guy Max Zorin, played by Christopher Walken in the film, A View to a Kill.
Zorin was the psychopathic result of a Nazi medical experiment and laughed as he killed. At least three of the killer's viedos featured the film and he is said to have copied his hairstyle.
On one video the killer is shown shooting an apple in snow covered woodland and before waving and smiling to the camera. He updated his website shortly before midnight warning he was set on "mass murder" adding "Although I chose the school as target, my motives for the attack are political and much much deeper and therefore I don't want this to be called only a 'school shooting'."
On his posting, which was removed shortly after the shooting, he posted a text calling for a "revolution against the system."
A teenager ran amok in his school, killing seven fellow pupils and the headmistress, before shooting himself. Hours before the massacre, the 18-year-old posted a chilling message on YouTube warning what he was about to do.
As more than a dozen other pupils from the Joleka High School in southern Finland were treated in hospital for gunshot wounds, shocked witnesses told how the 18-year-old gunman had clinically walked from classroom to classroom selecting his victims before pumping bullets into them as terrified other pupils jumped for their lives from windows.
Hours earlier the unidentified pupil had posted the last of a series of messages on the internet outlining his sickening plans to "eliminate all who I see unfit."
Wearing a black T-shirt proclaiming "Humanity is Overrated", the short haired teenager is seen brandishing a handgun which he points straight into the camera.
The YouTube video, set to a hard-driving song called "Stray Bullet", and entitled "Joleka High School Massacre - 11/7/2007" shows a still photo of a low building that appears to be the 400-pupil school in Tuusula, a town with a population of 35,000 some 40 miles from the Finnish capital Helsinki.
The photo breaks apart to reveal a red-tinted picture of a man pointing a handgun into the screen. It is posted by a user called Sturmgeist89 - Sturmgeist means storm spirit in German. He describes himself as "a social darwinist."
"I am prepared to fight and die for my cause," Sturmgeist declares, "I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see unfit, disgraces of human race and failures of natural selection."
Giving his name as Pekka-Eric Auvinen, he says his weapon of choice will be a semi-automatic .22 pistol and that his targets are "students and faculty, society, humanity, human race."
Police would not comment on whether Auvinen was the gunman's real name.
Hours after posting his last message it appeared the teenager carried out his threat and, shot dead the school's principal and five male and two female pupils, before shouting "This is the start of the revolution" and shooting himself in the head.
The teenage gunman was pronounced dead from a gunshot wound to his head at Toolo Hospital in central Helsinki, where he had been taken in critical condition after the shooting.
Tuomas Hulkkonen, a student at the school, said he knew the gunman well, and that he had been acting strange of late.
"He withdrew into his shell. I had noticed a change in him just recently, and I thought that perhaps he was a bit depressed, or something, but I couldn't imagine that in reality he would do anything like this," Hulkkonen told Finnish TV station MTV3.
Teacher Kim Kiuru said : "He (the gunman) was moving systematically through the school hallways, knocking on the doors and shooting through the doors.
"It felt unreal, a pupil I have taught myself was running towards me, screaming, a pistol in his hand."
He said the said the first he knew of the incident was when the head announced over the public address system just before noon (1000GMT) that all students should remain in their classrooms.
"I stayed in the corridor to listen to more instructions, having locked my classroom door.
"After that I saw the gunman running with what appeared to be a small-calibre handgun in his hand through the doors toward me, after which I escaped to the corridor downstairs and ran in the opposite direction."
He said he saw a woman's body as he fled the building.
"Then my pupils shouted at me out of the windows to ask what they should do and I told them to jump out of the windows... and all my pupils were saved."
Several times the gunman is said to have stopped to reload his pistol. Some told how he fired clutching the gun in both hands and raised it in front of his face.
As police marksmen surrounded the school and anxious parents waited nearby for news, pupils, aged 12-18, were evacuated to shelter behind a protective wall.
Outside a church community building close by, a mother waited as a Red Cross bus pulled up outside. She watched children stepping off the bus and burst into tears when, through a window, she spotted her child, unharmed.
The shootings are the first such incidents in Finnish history - previous school confrontations have involved knives at worst and no one has died.
Despite having the world's third-largest per capita handgun ownership, violent incidents are rare at Finnish schools.
Police chief Matti Tohkanen said the gunman had obtained a licence for his pistol on October 19 and had no previous criminal record.
"He was from an ordinary family," he added.
"This is a peaceful place, nothing like this has happened in the past and nothing like this is to be expected either," Tuusula mayor Hannu Joensivusaid.
Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen described the situation as "extremely tragic" and said the government would hold an emergency meeting.
One theory last night that the killer had been "inspired" by the Columbine school massacre in the United States in 1999 that left 12 pupils and a teacher dead.
Songs by the band KMFDM, including "Stray Bullet", were found on the website of one of the student killers, Eric Harris.
The Finnish killer is said to have been fascinated by the Bond bad-guy Max Zorin, played by Christopher Walken in the film, A View to a Kill.
Zorin was the psychopathic result of a Nazi medical experiment and laughed as he killed. At least three of the killer's viedos featured the film and he is said to have copied his hairstyle.
On one video the killer is shown shooting an apple in snow covered woodland and before waving and smiling to the camera. He updated his website shortly before midnight warning he was set on "mass murder" adding "Although I chose the school as target, my motives for the attack are political and much much deeper and therefore I don't want this to be called only a 'school shooting'."
On his posting, which was removed shortly after the shooting, he posted a text calling for a "revolution against the system."
