Prague Shooter May Have Been Responsible For String of Killings, Including Newborn Baby, Say Czech Police

The gunman who killed 14 at Prague University on Thursday may have been behind two other fatal shootings in the Czech Republic in the past week, police say.

Prague witnessed the largest mass murder in the history of the Czech Republic [established 1992] on Thursday as a gunman identified as ‘David K.’ attacked the arts faculty of the city’s Charles University, killing 14 victims and then himself. But now police say the university attack may have been just one part of a larger week-long spree, including the death of an infant.

Hours before the university shooting, police discovered a 55-year-old man shot dead in the village of Kladensko, an hour’s drive from Prague. From the evidence at the scene, police suspected the man’s 24-year-old son, a history student with a history of “psychological problems”, and discovered he was due to give a lecture at the university’s psychology department later that day, leading them to fear an attack there.

Police swooped on the Charles University psychology department in an attempt to protect lives, but for reasons not yet known the gunman decided to attack a different university department some streets away, the arts building on the riverfront. It was claimed while some of those killed were from gunshot wounds, others may have died by falling from the roof of the building as they attempted to escape the gunman. Images taken at the scene have shown students clinging to the outer walls of the building in hiding.

The attack ended with police opening fire at the gunman, but the final blow was delivered by the gunman’s own weapon. Police reported Thursday afternoon that the suspect had been “eliminated”.

The two separate attacks by the gunman leading to the deaths of 16 including himself followed by just days another gun murder in the Czech Republic that until now had gone unsolved and led to a major police manhunt in the woods to the east of the capital. In the leafy suburb of Klánovice last Friday, a 32-year-old man and his two-month-old daughter had been shot dead.

A potential link between that shooting and the university gunman was spoken of first by the Czech Interior Minister very shortly after Thursday’s shooting as unproven but apparently under consideration, as reported at the time. Now Czech police, reports newspaper Lidové Noviny, are formally linking the unsolved double murder last week and the university gunman.

In a report calling the killings “pure evil”, the paper cites police force president Martin Vondrášek said the killing of the father and baby last week was a random attack with no link between shooter and victim, and evidence now found at the home of the gunman suggests he was the perpetrator.

If the link it proven, it would suggest the known death toll of the university shooter encompasses 14 at the art department, his father, and two in the suburb, plus himself by suicide for 18. Even so, the university attack is the deadliest in modern Czech history, exceeding the eight killed at a restaurant in the town of Uherské Brod in 2015, and six killed in a shooting at a hospital in 2019.