The attack on the school in Balagansk, Irkutsk region, Russia, September 23, 2024

 

Only a week has passed since the tragedy at School No. 68 in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, where a 13-year-old student brought two hammers, an air pistol, and a knife to school and attacked his classmates. At the time, three children and a teacher were injured.  And now, just 7 days later, a new attack, again a school, again with hammers as weapons. Three injured teenagers, although the victims could have been much more, simply, hearing the screams of children, a gym teacher came to their aid, who selflessly rushed to the armed criminal and managed to disarm him and detain him until the police arrived. And if he had not been there?

Again and again the situation is repeated, which has happened many times before: the criminal, without any obstacles in his way, plans a crime, prepares a weapon, quietly sneaks the weapon into the school premises and already there takes it out and uses it to attack and, if not for the courage of the teacher, the ending of this story could have been more tragic. 

And if he had used not a cold weapon, but a firearm, explosive or incendiary device, or poisonous substances. How would it have ended then? If someone says that I am exaggerating, here is a small statistical reference that for the period from 2000 to 2023 inclusive, when attacking educational institutions (schools, colleges, kindergartens, universities) attackers used explosive, incendiary or atomizing devices 38 times and this is only known cases, if we talk about the use of firearms, then there the count has long exceeded three-digit figure, and the list of victims four-digit*.  

This applies not only to Russia, in 2024 alone (and the year is not over yet) schools and other educational institutions in China, Germany, USA, Mexico, Finland, Bosnia, Greece and the UK were attacked, in which 59 people were injured, of whom 17 were killed, 42 were injured, most of the victims were children.

Can't we see that schools and other educational institutions have long ago turned into high-risk objects and their protection should be provided in a completely different way, we need to completely change the approach to the organization of the security system of educational institutions.

How many more victims do we need to realize this?

Author - Roman Grishin

* Statistical data are taken from Handbook of Crimes and Terrorist Acts in schools and other educational institutions

#school #balagansk #Irkutsk #Russia #murder #threat #attack #children #security #guarding #hammer