logo
Pictured: Second Austria school massacre victim who was gunned down by cat-obsessed loner - as her father pays heartbreaking tribute to 'my little mouse'

Pictured: Second Austria school massacre victim who was gunned down by cat-obsessed loner - as her father pays heartbreaking tribute to 'my little mouse'

Daily Mail​a day ago

The second victim of Austria's deadly school shooting has been pictured for the first time.
Student Hana A., 15, was among the 10 people who were brutally murdered on Tuesday after a former pupil opened fire at a high school in Graz.
Sharing a selfie with his beloved daughter, Hana's devastated father confirmed her death and paid tribute to her in a social media post.
'My little mouse, may God grant you paradise', he wrote on Facebook.
The teen, who was originally from Bosnia and Herzegovina, was due to graduate in three years and hoped to study medicine.
Imam Sabahudin Hasić, the spiritual leader of the Bošnjak Islamic community in Graz, described her as a 'ray of sunshine' who had a 'bright future ahead of her, and now it has been taken away.'
Hana's brother delivered a touching speech to hundreds of people at a vigil on Wednesday evening.
'Hana was so energetic, so full of life, so brave', her grief stricken sibling said.
'I thank you for the 15 years I was able to spend with you...We miss you and we love you'.
He also described the moment he found out about the gun rampage at the school, and how he knew something was wrong when he didn't hear from her.
'She didn't contact me, and my worries grew even greater. I'm experiencing something I knew from a movie in real life.'
Hana's friend Lea Ilir Bajrami was also killed.
Mourning the teen in a Facebook post on Tuesday, Lea's heartbroken aunt wrote: 'Today, my niece Lea tragically lost her life in the attack in Graz. We pray for her soul and express our gratitude to all those who share our pain during these difficult times.'
Authorities have been searching for clues as to why a 21-year-old gunman, named locally as Artur A., shot dead 10 people at his former high school, BORG Dreierschützengasse, before turning the gun on himself.
Police said he acted alone in Tuesday's rampage, armed with a shotgun and a pistol.
Investigators have been scouring his home and the internet to find out why he opened fire at the school.
Arthur A., a 21-year-old from a suburb of Graz, was pictured holding a cat in the first images to emerge since the horrifying attack.
He reportedly sent his mother a farewell video just moments before he went on his killing spree.
Alarmed by his confusing message, she immediately notified police.
But by that time, Artur had already carried out the deadly attack and taken his own life in a bathroom.
In another message left behind, he was said to have blamed the school and bullying for the act. He also asked that his cat be looked after, Kronen Zeitung reports.
Investigators said they found a non-functional pipe bomb and abandoned plans for a bombing in a search of the assailant's home.
'A farewell letter in analog and digital form was found,' Franz Ruf, the public security director at Austria's Interior Ministry, told ORF public television Tuesday night.
'He says goodbye to his parents. But no motive can be inferred from the farewell letter, and that is a matter for further investigations.'
Asked whether the assailant had attacked victims randomly or targeted them specifically, Ruf said that is also under investigation and he didn't want to speculate.
Policemen are seen in a street close to the school where several people died in a shooting, on June 10, 2025
He said that wounded people were found on various levels of the school and, in one case, in front of the building.
The former student killed a teacher and nine pupils between the ages of 14 and 17. A further 11 were seriously injured.
In new details, investigators said the gunman, who would have turned 22 in less than two weeks, did not have his own social media profiles.
He was described as a loner who maintained contact with only one friend, who did not know he was planning to unleash carnage on Tuesday morning.
Despite living in Kalsforf - population 8,000 - for five years, Artur did not get involved in any local events, activities or sports teams. He also appeared to have no social media profiles.
'He was a very inconspicuous young man,' said Kalsdorf mayor Manfred Komericky.
'It felt like he wasn't even noticed. Nobody really knew him. This is exactly the profile that we unfortunately see too often - silent, socially isolated recluses.'
Artur had studied computer science at middle school and went on to business school until 2019, local media reports.
He lived with his single mother in a suburb of Graz and had struggled to find work, Heute reports.
Artur is understood to have been a former student at the school attacked on Tuesday, but had not completed his studies.
In the country's worst mass school shooting, terror-stricken pupils pretended to be dead as they cowered in corridors and two classrooms or ran for their lives.
Chilling video captured the sound of shots followed by screams as the gunman picked off his victims.
The victims were commemorated with a minute's silence on Wednesday morning.
Churches rang funeral bells, including St Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, where around 900 public transport vehicles halted for a minute.
Public broadcaster ORF paused all radio and TV programmes for one minute, with TV showing a message to say the country was mourning the victims.
Ennio Resnik, a pupil at the school, said students and teachers needed time to come to terms with what had happened, and asked that they be left in peace for a few days.
'It's surreal, you can't describe or really understand it,' he said, speaking to reporters outside an events centre near the school where students were being offered counselling.
Austria declared three days of national mourning, with the shootings prompting a rare show of solidarity among often bitterly divided political parties.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Graz gunman was first-person shooter games obsessive, police say
Graz gunman was first-person shooter games obsessive, police say

The Guardian

time18 hours ago

  • The Guardian

Graz gunman was first-person shooter games obsessive, police say

A gunman who killed 10 people at his former school in the Austrian city of Graz was an 'obsessive online first-person shooter', according to police, who gave detailed information for the first time about how he had planned the attack. The 21-year-old Austrian, who shot dead 10 people and then himself on Tuesday morning after going on a rampage at the school close to the city centre, had spent much of his free time playing what were described by police as 'ego shooting' online video games, in which participants typically use virtual firearms to kill enemies. Police said they believed the online community of players formed his main social contacts and that he was otherwise a loner who kept to himself. It emerged that among the people killed by the man, identified by the Austrian and German media as Arthur A, was one of his former teachers. Police said it was unknown if he had deliberately targeted her. The 59-year-old teacher was killed along with nine pupils – six female and three male – aged between 14 and 17. Nine people are still being treated in hospital for their injuries, including a male teacher, but all were stable and the last two in intensive care were to be moved out during the course of the day, health officials said. It also emerged on Thursday in a report by the state broadcaster ORF, which was confirmed by a spokesperson for the country's military, that the killer had recently failed a psychological test to enter the armed forces. However, he had even more recently passed the psychological checks required to be in possession of the weapons he used to carry out the killings, which he carried legally, police said. The man, who had attended the school and dropped out three years ago, was an apprentice at an industrial school. He lived alone with his mother and was not previously known to police. The shooting rampage, the worst in the country's history, has sparked an emotional debate over the state of the country's gun laws, which critics have said are too lax. During a visit to Graz on Wednesday evening, Belgium's president, Alexander Van der Bellen, said it was necessary for politicians to review the laws and to 'look into how it is possible for a 21-year-old to own handguns and long weapons and have the opportunity to purchase the appropriate ammunition for them and to cause this mayhem'. The country's national security council, set up in light of the 9/11 attacks in the US, was due to address the issue when it met on Thursday afternoon. Discussions have also begun about tightening security in schools across the country, with some calling for the installation of metal detectors at school gates. Michael Lohnegger, the head of the Styrian state criminal police office, said the man planned the attack in minute detail. He described how the man entered the main entrance of the BORG Dreierschützengasse school at 9.43am on Tuesday carrying a backpack containing his weapons and ammunition. Between 350 and 400 pupils were present on site at the time. 'He went into a toilet on the third floor and took various objects out of his rucksack. He put on a weapons belt with a hunting knife, a pair of shooting glasses and a headset, took out a Glock 19 pistol, a sawn-off Mercury shotgun, and loaded the weapons. 'At 9.47 he proceeded to carry out a seven-minute rampage through the school, going from the third to the second floor, and opened fire randomly on people in the school, who were from the 5th class. 'He finally went to the third floor where pupils of the 7th class were … fired at the closed doors of the classrooms until he was able to open them and then randomly shot at the people he found there.' He finally returned to the toilet cubicle on the third floor where he subsequently shot himself in the head at 10.07am, Lohnegger said. Owing to the fact that the first team of armed police entered the school building at 10.06am and heard no shots, investigators are working on the assumption that Arthur A might well have planned to carry out more killings, as he had plenty more ammunition on his person, but his knowledge that police were in the building may have prompted him to stop. There was no evidence that the killer knew the pupils he shot, Lohnegger added, but it had been established he had been taught by the teacher who was killed. There was no evidence that this was a motive behind the killing, he said. Lohnegger said Arthur A had worked out a 'very detailed plan of action. He had informed himself extremely precisely and given a lot of thought as to when he would approach each floor.' There was no information as to when he abandoned plans to deploy a homemade pipe bomb, found at his home, after it proved to be dysfunctional, although Lohnegger said it 'in theory contained all the components necessary' to work. Arthur A bought the shotgun in mid-April and the handgun several weeks later. He had been attending shooting practice at a range in Graz since March, Lohnegger said. He said people at the school had reacted 'very well' to the incident, after recent training in what to do in case of a shooting, by shutting doors and barricading themselves into classrooms. Police said they had yet to rule out that the killer may have had an accomplice who helped him in his planning or in his execution of the attack. Lohnegger described Arthur A as someone who lived a 'very reserved' life and 'was not very willing to participate in real life'. A search of the flat where he lived with his mother in a suburb south of Graz had uncovered a suicide note 'directed as an apology towards his family'. The first details of some of the victims began emerging on Wednesday evening. A 15-year-old Bosnian-Austrian girl called Hana was one of the first to be killed, her family said. She had been preparing to give a lecture to her class. Speaking on behalf of her Bosnian Muslim family, Sabahudin Hasić, a local imam, said they were 'utterly destroyed, as is our whole community. This deed is completely unimaginable.' Hana had wanted to study medicine, he said, describing her as a 'sunshine'. In a post on social media, her father wrote: 'My little mouse, may God give you paradise'. Standing next to her in class had been Lea B, who was also killed. The 15-year-old's family had come to Austria from Kosovo, and she was born in Austria. Sokol Haliti, the mayor of the family's home town in Viti, Kosovo, told Austrian media that the community, where her father was born and where her grandparents still live, was in mourning. 'It is a terrible tragedy. Not only for Austria. Lea was also one of us,' he said.

Austrian school shooter an introverted fan of online shooting games, say police
Austrian school shooter an introverted fan of online shooting games, say police

The Independent

time19 hours ago

  • The Independent

Austrian school shooter an introverted fan of online shooting games, say police

The 21-year-old man who carried out Austria 's worst school shooting was an introverted fan of online shooting games, criminal investigators said on Thursday. The Austrian, identified by local media as Arthur A, killed 10 people on Tuesday before killing himself at his former high school in the southern city of Graz. Police found discarded plans for a bomb attack and a non-functional pipe bomb during a search of his home after the shooting in Graz, the capital of the state of Styria. Police are still trying to establish a motive, but Michael Lohnegger, head of Styria's criminal investigation office, said findings indicated the man was very introverted and that his great passion was online first-person shooting games. "He led an extremely withdrawn life; he didn't want to take part in activities in normal life outside in the real world, he preferred to withdraw into the virtual space," he told reporters. Lohnegger said the man's closest friend had been questioned and that the shooter had social contacts with fellow online gamers. Police are checking whether he had assistance from other people in the run-up to the crime. Police said the rampage at the school lasted about seven minutes and that the man took his own life in a toilet about 10 minutes after beginning the attack. A few minutes earlier, the man entered the school with a rucksack, then went into a bathroom to prepare for his assault. Then he put on a weapon belt with a hunting knife, donned shooting glasses and a headset and armed himself with a Glock pistol and sawn-off shotgun, police said. He opened fire at random on people on the second and third floors of the school, shooting off the locks to the doors in one of the classrooms he attacked, according to Lohnegger. Most of the victims were apparently unknown to the shooter, but he did know one of the teachers who died, police said. It was unclear if that fact played a role in her death. Police are alert to potential copycat attacks, and on Thursday, a man caused alarm at Vienna's Technical University by throwing a package into the entrance area and shouting it was going to explode. No threat was identified. Psychological evaluation The shooter acquired the guns legally in April and May after passing a psychological evaluation for a necessary permit, and had practised shooting at a gun club since March, police said. Authorities said the man failed to graduate from the school, and Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung reported that after dropping out, he attempted to join the army but was deemed psychologically unsuitable due to his introversion. Local media reported that the man, who lived with his mother on the outskirts of Graz, felt bullied at school and wanted revenge. Police declined to confirm this. "There's no evidence from his private life that he ever expressed any anger or displeasure towards the school, pupils or teaching staff," Lohnegger said. Neighbours and officials in the commuter town of Kalsdorf bei Graz, where he lived, described a withdrawn, slight man who usually wore a cap and headphones, covering himself up. Of over a dozen local residents spoken to about the shooter, few wanted to talk at all. Some said they had seen him, but none said they knew him. The man left behind a farewell note and video in which he apologised to his family for his actions and thanked them, but they gave no indication of his motives, police said. Questions about the bullying allegations at the Dreierschuetzengasse school where the man attended were put to its deputy head, Norbert Urabl, on national broadcaster ORF. "Bullying is a very delicate topic. Bullying occurs on so many levels that it's very difficult to pinpoint the term bullying in this case," he said. "But the fact is that, if bullying can be triggered, then more sensitivity is urgently needed to recognise bullying processes earlier." If you are experiencing feelings of distress, or are struggling to cope, you can speak to the Samaritans, in confidence, on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@ or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store