David Kozak is believed to be the author of the largest shooting since the Czech Republic became an independent state in 1993. On Thursday, December 21, the 24-year-old man killed 13 people at the prestigious Charles University in Prague and in injured 25 others, ten of them seriously, according to a latest report communicated this Friday by the Czech Minister of the Interior. The assailant committed suicide after the shooting, police said.
According to several local media, the killer was himself a philosophy student at Charles University, within the Faculty of Letters. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in history-European studies as well as a master’s degree in Polish history, reports the left-leaning news site Novinky. “He was a quiet boy, an introvert. He didn’t talk to us much,” a student who graduated at the same time as him told local media. Another of his classmates who attended him in high school also described a teenager who was “very discreet, who didn’t talk to many people,” reports Radio Prague International.
On social networks and encrypted messaging, however, a radically different face was revealed in the hours following the attack. On Telegram, where the student posted messages written in the Cyrillic alphabet, David Kozak claims to hate “everyone” and to be hated by everyone in return. “I always wanted to kill (…) and perhaps commit suicide,” he wrote in a publication, also mentioning his plan to shoot at a school.
In the same message, David Kozak explains being inspired by “Alina”. This would be Alina Afanaskina, a 14-year-old Russian teenager who, at the beginning of December, killed two people with a gun in a school in Bryansk (west of Russia), before committing suicide. The student “intended to cause and leave behind as much suffering as possible,” reports Radio Prague International. His last message was on December 19. He mentions an unbearable “buzzing” in his ears.
“It was a premeditated violent attack,” said Czech police chief Martin Vondrasek. For his part, Interior Minister Vit Rakusan assures that “nothing indicates that this crime is linked to international terrorism”.
The Czech police chief explained that David Kozak legally possessed several weapons, but was not known to the police: “According to the checks we have carried out so far, the perpetrator of the attack has a blank slate. Nothing reprehensible was found regarding his background,” reports Irozhlas, Czech public radio. Likewise, during the shooting, the student had brought “several firearms and a huge quantity of ammunition,” explained Martin Vondrasek. But it is impossible to know, at this stage of the investigation, whether the weapons used were legally held.
Likewise, the police chief indicated that his services were looking for the attacker even before the shooting, after the latter’s father was found dead in Hostoun, a village in central Bohemia (west of the capital), where the student. According to police, David Kozak “left for Prague saying he wanted to commit suicide.” The authorities thus suspect the young man of being responsible for the death of his father.
