More on Austrian School Shooting, Tenth Victim Dies

Yesterday, a 21-year-old former student of BORG Dreierschützengasse armed with a pistol and shotgun opened fire on his old high school in Graz, Austria. He killed nine students and a teacher before taking his own life in a school bathroom. The attack lasted 17 minutes but has left a nation shattered.

By the following day, a tenth victim had died from injuries sustained in the shooting. Authorities confirmed that the dead included teenagers aged 14 to 17, and a 59-year-old teacher. A dozen others were injured, several of them critically. As if the shock and grief weren’t enough, a second school in Graz received a threat late Tuesday, prompting a wider alert and fears of potential copycats.

Police have now identified the shooter as Arthur A., a 21-year-old Austrian citizen who once studied IT at the school. He never graduated and reportedly struggled to find stable employment afterward. He lived in a quiet suburb with his mother and siblings, largely unnoticed. Neighbors and acquaintances described him as a loner who kept his head down, headphones in, eyes hidden under a cap. He had no prior police record.

Inside the home he shared with his mother, police discovered a non-functional pipe bomb and a discarded plan to carry out a bombing alongside the shooting. They also recovered a handwritten suicide note and a digital video message. That video was reportedly sent to his mother just before the shooting began, but she did not open it until it was too late. By the time she contacted the authorities, the attack was already underway.

Austria has declared three days of national mourning. Bells tolled across the country and public events have been canceled. Programming on state media paused for a nationwide moment of silence. It’s a unified, solemn tribute to lives lost in a place that should have been safe.

If we did that in the United States for every school shooting, our flags would never rise above half-mast again.

Arthur A. knew the school he attacked well. He once sat in those same classrooms, but never completed his education. Local media reports suggest that frustration from his academic and professional failures weighed heavily on him. Some outlets have claimed he felt bullied during his school years, though students who knew him say they never witnessed anything of the sort.

Police have yet to confirm a motive, but in my opinion, the leading theory is the most common one, rage redirected. Like so many school shooters before him, Arthur A. appears to have turned his personal disappointment outward, taking it out on those who had nothing to do with his failures. That pattern of internal frustration metastasizing into external destruction is all too familiar, and rarely confronted.

Austria is asking how this could happen there. America stopped asking that question a long time ago because we’ve just accepted death like that as a way of life.

(Sources)