A mass shooting on Oct. 17 at a college in Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014 from Ukraine, left 18 dead and dozens of others wounded.
Russia’s top investigative body, the Investigative Committee, said that the suspect was identified as Vladislav Roslyakov, an 18-year-old fourth-year student at the vocational college in Kerch.
They said he arrived in the early afternoon with a rifle and opened fire; officials had said previously that an explosive device went off in the college.
Officials said they are treating the situation now as a mass murder and not a terrorist attack.
Condolences, Tension
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the attack was a tragedy and offered condolences to the victims’ families. He promised that the government will do everything necessary to help those wounded.Putin was speaking from Sochi, where he met with his visiting Egyptian counterpart Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.
“Unless authorities determine that the suspect was acting alone out of some personal motivation, the incident is likely to increase tension between Russia and Ukraine, which Moscow has accused in the past of seeking to carry out acts of sabotage in Crimea,” the outlet reported.
Witnesses Speak
Olga Grebbennikova, the director of the college, said in a video posted on the Internet that she witnessed the attack.“They ran up to the second floor with automatic rifles—I don’t know with what—and opened doors ... and killed everyone they could find,” she said, struggling to maintain composure.
She seemed to indicate that there were multiple attackers.
Anastasia Yenshina, a 15-year-old student at the college, said she was in the bathroom when the ground shook from an explosion.
“I came out and there was dust and smoke, I couldn’t understand, I'd been deafened. Everyone started running. I did not know what to do. Then they told us to leave the building through the gymnasium,” she said.
“Everyone ran there ... I saw a girl lying there. There was a child who was being helped to walk because he could not move on his own. The wall was covered in blood. Then everyone started to climb over the fence, and we could still hear explosions. Everyone was scared. People were crying,” she said.
