ANALYSIS – Even as the 24-year-old philosophy student, David Kozak, fired a high-powered ZEV-30 rifle from the balcony of Charles University's Faculty of Arts building Thursday in Prague, Czech Republic, one man heroically stood his ground below, desperately trying to distract the shooter from killing over 14 students and faculty.
A video captured the moment the man repeatedly yelled: “Hey, you! Shoot here! Shoot here, you f**ker!”
Tragically, the focused gunman calmly continues to unleash his hail of bullets at his targets. The brave student also tried to alert police to the shooter's exact location, and yelled, “He is shooting! Get to cover!”
The shooter later committed suicide as well armed police surrounded him.
In addition to the 14 confirmed killed, a further 25 people were injured in the attack – including one Dutch citizen and two people from the United Arab Emirates.
This is the Czech Republic's deadliest mass shooting.
The New York Post reported:
Kozak, who is believed to have killed his own father before carrying out the rampage, also is suspected of killing a 32-year-old man and his 2-month-old daughter in Prague a week ago, Police Chief Martin Vondrasek said.
Their bodies were found Dec. 15 in a wooded area of Klanovice, 11 miles east of Prague's city center, in what appears to have been a random attack, the Telegraph reported.
Vondrasek described Kozak as an excellent student with no criminal record, adding that authorities had “unconfirmed information from an account on a social network that he was supposedly inspired by one terrorist attack in Russia in the autumn of this year.”
But mental illness clearly played a part.
Additionally, a Telegram account under Kozak's name contained disturbing posts like “I hate the world and want to leave as much pain as possible, and a post from Tuesday read, “I have a ringing in my ears … like some kind of f–king fireflies. I wanted to rip my ears out.”
While the killings are thought to have been random, most of the dead and wounded are women.
One of those is Lenka Hlavkova, the head of the Institute of Musicology. She is the only one publicly named so far. She is believed to have left behind two school-age sons.
The BBC noted the quick response from local police:
Officials told a news conference on Friday that students barricaded themselves into rooms of the university building during the attack and that police had to go floor-by-floor to get them out.
They showed bodycam footage of officers as they hunted for the attacker, who died on the roof of the building.
Police said people had been asked to come out with their hands up because police were unsure if the attacker had accomplices.
The city's police director, Petr Matejcek, added that there were “piles of ammunition in the corridors” and said he believed the quick arrival of police prevented more bloodshed.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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