Classroom killer's final photos: Cat-obsessed gunman posted photograph of his FEET inside school bathroom cubicle moments before killing ten - and also took pictures of weapons he used
The Austrian shooter who killed 10 people at his former school before turning the gun on himself earlier this week shared pictures of his preparation and the weapons he used in the assault to social media, it has emerged.
Arthur A., a 21-year-old avid gamer and cat lover, launched his attack at the BORG Dreierschutzengasse high school in Graz, a city in the southern state of Styria, on Tuesday.
The shooter shared an image of his own feet clad in black leather combat boots while sitting in a toilet cubicle on the third floor of the school.
There he strapped on a gun belt with a hunting knife, shooting glasses and a headset, loaded his weapons and stormed into the hallways to carry out the massacre that was later confirmed as Austria's worst mass shooting.
In two other posts, the young killer snapped a selfie and showed off a shotgun and a pistol he had bought along with the caption: 'Veeeeeerrry early birthday present for myself', according to Austrian media.
He went on to use both weapons in the course of his rampage.
The images of the killer were brought to light after it emerged the social recluse had sent his mother a farewell video moments before he carried out his attack, pleading for forgiveness for 'what I'm about to do now'.
Investigators said his mother opened the video 24 minutes after receiving it and immediately notified police, but her son had already slaughtered 10 students and shot himself before armed cops descended on the scene.
Arthur A. also requested that his cat be looked after following his demise and said that bullying at school had caused him to drop out early and led him to commit the heinous crime.
The young killer showed off a shotgun and a pistol he had bought along with the caption: 'Veeeeeerrry early birthday present for myself'. Both were used in the shooting
'A farewell letter in analogue and digital form was found,' Franz Ruf, the public security director at Austria's interior ministry, told ORF public television following the shooting.
'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.
He said that wounded people were found on various levels of the school and, in one case, in front of the building.
The student victims were aged between 14 and 17. A teacher was also killed.
In new details, investigators said the gunman, who would have turned 22 in less than two weeks, had maintained contact with only one friend in the days leading up to the attack.
Mayor of Karlsdorf, a small town near Graz where the killer lived, told reporters the evidence suggested that Arthur A. 'was a very inconspicuous young man'.
'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.'
Austrian outlet Kronen Zeitung said the killer had an interest in the 1999 US Columbine school massacre in Colorado carried out by two teenage shooters and that he apparently used a photo of one of the pair on a profile linked to his online gaming pseudonym.
Police are continuing to scour the shooter's electronic devices but said yesterday they had not discovered any video of the high school shooting on his mobile phone.
Criminal police head Michael Lohnegger described the shooter as a 'very introverted person'.
'We discovered that his great passion was participating in so-called online first-person shooting games,' Lohnegger said, adding the killer had carefully planned the attack, according to a handwritten note found at his home.
This note 'showed that the entire course of events had been planned by the perpetrator down to the most minute detail', Lohnegger said.
Austrian media published photos that showed the killer being lauded for his exploits as a competitive gamer.
Arthur A. was seen wearing a yellow and black team jersey at an Austrian gaming tournament called VulkanLAN2024 last year. He was also pictured clutching what appeared to be a winning plaque.
People light candles on the main square in the city center after a deadly shooting at a school in Graz, Austria, Tuesday, June 10, 2025
Nine students were killed in Tuesday's attack - six girls and three boys aged between 14 and 17, one of whom had Polish citizenship - as well as a teacher, police said.
Another 11 people were wounded before the attacker took his own life.
A 15-year-old Kosovan girl named Lea Ilir Bajrami was the first of his victims to be pictured.
Mourning the teen in a Facebook post, her 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.'
Her grandfather Muhabi Bajrami wrote on Facebook: 'With a broken heart and great pain, we inform family, friends and relatives that our granddaughter tragically lost her life in the attack that occurred in Graz, Austria.
'We pray for her soul and express our gratitude to all those who share our pain in these difficult moments.'
Shots and screams rang out as the shooter stormed into his old classroom blasting a shotgun and a pistol.
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.
One student fleeing from the shooter called her mother during the attack saying: 'Mama, mama, I'm running for my life!'
The mother described the situation to reporters as unbearable, saying: 'It was so terrible, you can't even imagine it.'
Another student reportedly witnessed three classmates being shot. His father said: 'He was terrified and lay down on the floor so the shooter would think he was dead.'
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. Pictured: Special forces descended on the high school shortly before 10am local time after reports of gunshots
A 15-year-old Kosovan girl named Lea was the first victim to be pictured
Pictured: Two female students cling on to each other as they escape the school building
People embrace as they gather on the main square following a deadly school shooting in Graz, Austria, June 10, 2025
Family members reunite following the deadly school shooting in Graz, Austria
The school's religious studies teacher Paul Nitsche told how he saw the gunman blasting out locks with a shotgun before entering and spraying staff and students with handgun bullets.
'It was hard to take in,' he said.
'This is something I had never even imagined before. That's what the situation was like as I was running down the stairwell - I thought to myself, this isn't real.'
Another teacher, who asked not to be named, said: 'The whole community is in a state of shock. Schools should be places of safety and learning. But on this day it became more like something from a nightmare.
'Everyone was in a state of sheer terror.'
On Tuesday, Cchurch bells rang across the city of Graz, all local radio and TV broadcasts were interrupted and more than 900 public transport vehicles, including trams and buses, ground to a halt for 10am mark of remembrance.
Two other schools in the city, including a nursery school, were evacuated today after they received 'copycat' threats shortly before the planned minute's silence, though no further attacks occurred.
Six female and three male victims died quickly after being shot, with one adult said to be among them.
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BBC News
13 hours ago
- BBC News
School killings leave stunned Austria and France searching for answers
Two shocking attacks within two hours of each other, in France and Austria, have left parents and governments reeling and at a loss how to protect school students from random, deadly about 08:15 on Tuesday, a 14-year-old boy from an ordinary family in Nogent, eastern France, drew out a kitchen knife during a school bag check and fatally stabbed a school long afterwards in south-east Austria, a 21-year-old who had dropped out of school three years earlier, walked into Dreierschützengasse high school in Graz at 09:43, and shot dead nine students and a teacher with a Glock 19 handgun and a sawn-off both countries there is a demand for solutions and for a greater focus on young people who resort to such has never seen a school attack on this scale, but the French stabbing took place during a government programme aimed at tackling the growth in knife crime. Austrians ask about gun laws and a failed system The Graz shooter, named by Austrian media as Arthur A, has been described by police as a very introverted person, who had retreated to the virtual "great passion" was online first-person shooter games, and he had social contacts with other gamers over the internet, according to Michael Lohnegger, the criminal investigation chief in Styria, the state where it happened.A former student at the Dreierschützengasse school, Arthur A had failed to complete his at the school, he put on a headset and shooting glasses, before going on a deadly seven-minute shooting spree. He then killed himself in a school owned the two guns legally, had passed a psychological test to own a licence and had several sessions of weapons training earlier this year at a Graz shooting has sparked a big debate in Austria about whether its gun laws need to be tightened – and about the level of care available for troubled young has emerged that the shooter was rejected from the country's compulsory military service in July ministry spokesman Michael Bauer told the BBC that Arthur A was found to be "psychologically unfit" for service after he underwent tests. But he said Austria's legal system prevented the army from passing on the results of such are now calls for that law to be changed. Alex, the mother of a 17-year-old boy who survived the shooting, told the BBC that more should have been done to prevent people like Arthur A from dropping out of school in the first place."We know… that when people shoot each other like this, it's mostly when they feel alone and drop out and be outside. And we don't know how to get them back in, into society, into the groups, into their peer groups," she said."We, as grown-ups, have got the responsibility for that, and we have to take it now."President Alexander Van der Bellen raised the possibility of tightening Austria's gun laws, on a visit to Graz after the attack: "If we come to the conclusion that Austria's gun laws need to be changed to ensure greater safety, then we will do so."Austria has one of the most heavily armed civilian populations in Europe, with an estimated 30 firearms per 100 there have been school shootings here before, they have been far smaller and involved far fewer mayor of Graz, Elke Kahr, believes no private person should be able to have weapons at all. "Weapons licences are issued too quickly," she told Austria's ORF TV. "Only the police should carry weapons, not private individuals."What we know about Austria school shootingGraz in shock and grief after attack French focus on mental health as well as security Armed gendarmes were present at the entrance to the Françoise Dolto middle school in Nogent, 100km (62 miles) east of Paris, when a teenager pulled out a 20cm kitchen knife and repeatedly stabbed Mélanie G, who was 31 and had a four-year-old boy accused of carrying out the murder told police that he had been reprimanded on Friday by another school assistant for kissing his girlfriend. As a result he had a grudge against school assistants in general, and apparently had made up his mind to kill one. Schools were closed on Monday for a bank holiday, and Tuesday was his first day state prosecutor's initial assessment was that the boy, called Quentin, came from a normal functioning family, and had no criminal or mental health record. However, the child also appeared detached and emotionless. Adept at violent video games, he showed a "fascination with death" and an "absence of reference-points relating to the value of human life". The Nogent attack does not fit the template of anti-social youth crime or gang violence seen in France until is there any suggestion of indoctrination over social to the prosecutor, the boy did little of that. He had been violent on two occasions against fellow pupils, and was suspended for a day each time. There is no family breakdown or deprivation and school officials described him as "sociable, a pretty good student, well-integrated into the life of the establishment".This year he had even been named the class "ambassador" on all the calls for greater security at schools, this crime took place literally under the noses of armed gendarmes. As Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau put it, some crimes will happen no matter how many police you more information on the boy's state of mind, we must wait for the full psychologist's report, and it may well be that there were signs missed, or there are family details we do not yet know the face of it, he is perhaps more a middle-class loner, and his apparent normality suggests a crime triggered by internalised mental processes, rather than by peer-driven association or emulation. That is what strikes the chord in France. If an ordinary boy can turn out like this from watching too many violent videos, then who is next?Significantly, the French government had only just approved showing the British Netflix series Adolescence as an aid in schools. There are differences, of course. The boy arrested for the killing of a teenage girl in the TV series yields to evil "toxic male" influences on social media – but there is the same question of teenagers being made vulnerable by isolation the political spectrum, there are calls for action but little agreement on what should be the priority, nor hope that anything can make much the killing, President Emmanuel Macron had angered the right by saying they were too obsessed with crime, and not sufficiently interested in other issues like the environment. The Nogent attack put him on the back foot, and he has repeated his pledge to ban social media to under there are two difficulties. One is the practicality of the measure, which in theory is being dealt with by the EU but is succumbing to endless procrastination. The other is that, according to the prosecutor, the boy was not especially interested in social media. It was violent video games that were his Minister François Bayrou has said that sales of knives to under-15s will be banned. But the boy took his from home. Bayrou says airport-style metal-detectors should be tested at schools, but most heads are populist right wants tougher sentences for teenagers carrying knives, and the exclusion of disruptive pupils from regular classes. But the boy in Nogent was not a problem the only measure everyone says is needed is more provision of school doctors, nurses and psychologists in order to detect early signs of pupils going off the of course will require a lot of money, which is another thing France does not have a lot of.
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Daily Mail
Classroom killer's final photos: Cat-obsessed gunman posted photograph of his FEET inside school bathroom cubicle moments before killing ten - and also took pictures of weapons he used
The Austrian shooter who killed 10 people at his former school before turning the gun on himself earlier this week shared pictures of his preparation and the weapons he used in the assault to social media, it has emerged. Arthur A., a 21-year-old avid gamer and cat lover, launched his attack at the BORG Dreierschutzengasse high school in Graz, a city in the southern state of Styria, on Tuesday. The shooter shared an image of his own feet clad in black leather combat boots while sitting in a toilet cubicle on the third floor of the school. There he strapped on a gun belt with a hunting knife, shooting glasses and a headset, loaded his weapons and stormed into the hallways to carry out the massacre that was later confirmed as Austria's worst mass shooting. In two other posts, the young killer snapped a selfie and showed off a shotgun and a pistol he had bought along with the caption: 'Veeeeeerrry early birthday present for myself', according to Austrian media. He went on to use both weapons in the course of his rampage. The images of the killer were brought to light after it emerged the social recluse had sent his mother a farewell video moments before he carried out his attack, pleading for forgiveness for 'what I'm about to do now'. Investigators said his mother opened the video 24 minutes after receiving it and immediately notified police, but her son had already slaughtered 10 students and shot himself before armed cops descended on the scene. Arthur A. also requested that his cat be looked after following his demise and said that bullying at school had caused him to drop out early and led him to commit the heinous crime. The young killer showed off a shotgun and a pistol he had bought along with the caption: 'Veeeeeerrry early birthday present for myself'. Both were used in the shooting 'A farewell letter in analogue and digital form was found,' Franz Ruf, the public security director at Austria's interior ministry, told ORF public television following the shooting. '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. He said that wounded people were found on various levels of the school and, in one case, in front of the building. The student victims were aged between 14 and 17. A teacher was also killed. In new details, investigators said the gunman, who would have turned 22 in less than two weeks, had maintained contact with only one friend in the days leading up to the attack. Mayor of Karlsdorf, a small town near Graz where the killer lived, told reporters the evidence suggested that Arthur A. 'was a very inconspicuous young man'. '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.' Austrian outlet Kronen Zeitung said the killer had an interest in the 1999 US Columbine school massacre in Colorado carried out by two teenage shooters and that he apparently used a photo of one of the pair on a profile linked to his online gaming pseudonym. Police are continuing to scour the shooter's electronic devices but said yesterday they had not discovered any video of the high school shooting on his mobile phone. Criminal police head Michael Lohnegger described the shooter as a 'very introverted person'. 'We discovered that his great passion was participating in so-called online first-person shooting games,' Lohnegger said, adding the killer had carefully planned the attack, according to a handwritten note found at his home. This note 'showed that the entire course of events had been planned by the perpetrator down to the most minute detail', Lohnegger said. Austrian media published photos that showed the killer being lauded for his exploits as a competitive gamer. Arthur A. was seen wearing a yellow and black team jersey at an Austrian gaming tournament called VulkanLAN2024 last year. He was also pictured clutching what appeared to be a winning plaque. People light candles on the main square in the city center after a deadly shooting at a school in Graz, Austria, Tuesday, June 10, 2025 Nine students were killed in Tuesday's attack - six girls and three boys aged between 14 and 17, one of whom had Polish citizenship - as well as a teacher, police said. Another 11 people were wounded before the attacker took his own life. A 15-year-old Kosovan girl named Lea Ilir Bajrami was the first of his victims to be pictured. Mourning the teen in a Facebook post, her 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.' Her grandfather Muhabi Bajrami wrote on Facebook: 'With a broken heart and great pain, we inform family, friends and relatives that our granddaughter tragically lost her life in the attack that occurred in Graz, Austria. 'We pray for her soul and express our gratitude to all those who share our pain in these difficult moments.' Shots and screams rang out as the shooter stormed into his old classroom blasting a shotgun and a pistol. 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. One student fleeing from the shooter called her mother during the attack saying: 'Mama, mama, I'm running for my life!' The mother described the situation to reporters as unbearable, saying: 'It was so terrible, you can't even imagine it.' Another student reportedly witnessed three classmates being shot. His father said: 'He was terrified and lay down on the floor so the shooter would think he was dead.' 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. Pictured: Special forces descended on the high school shortly before 10am local time after reports of gunshots A 15-year-old Kosovan girl named Lea was the first victim to be pictured Pictured: Two female students cling on to each other as they escape the school building People embrace as they gather on the main square following a deadly school shooting in Graz, Austria, June 10, 2025 Family members reunite following the deadly school shooting in Graz, Austria The school's religious studies teacher Paul Nitsche told how he saw the gunman blasting out locks with a shotgun before entering and spraying staff and students with handgun bullets. 'It was hard to take in,' he said. 'This is something I had never even imagined before. That's what the situation was like as I was running down the stairwell - I thought to myself, this isn't real.' Another teacher, who asked not to be named, said: 'The whole community is in a state of shock. Schools should be places of safety and learning. But on this day it became more like something from a nightmare. 'Everyone was in a state of sheer terror.' On Tuesday, Cchurch bells rang across the city of Graz, all local radio and TV broadcasts were interrupted and more than 900 public transport vehicles, including trams and buses, ground to a halt for 10am mark of remembrance. Two other schools in the city, including a nursery school, were evacuated today after they received 'copycat' threats shortly before the planned minute's silence, though no further attacks occurred. Six female and three male victims died quickly after being shot, with one adult said to be among them.
The Guardian
2 days 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.
