Poisoning as a weapon in schools: a new threat scenario

 
On January 21, 2026 *, a seventh-grade student, aged about 14, brought a chemical education kit (such kits are freely available in stores) to school. He selected one of the dangerous and toxic reagents, mixed it into a carbonated drink, and then offered it to his classmates. Three teenagers drank the beverage, felt severely ill, and were hospitalized at the nearest hospital with a diagnosis of toxic poisoning. Thanks to the competent actions of the medical staff, the teenagers' lives were not in danger, and they were discharged from the hospital the next day.

Unfortunately, attempts by schoolchildren to commit mass murders of their classmates or cause harm to their health are not uncommon these days. In this case, what is of interest to experts is not the fact of the crime itself, but the method chosen by the perpetrator. The use of toxic chemicals as weapons in mass killings in educational institutions is not the most common method, but it is not unique either. Since 2000, there have been five** recorded cases of this kind:

November 20, 2006, Emsdetten, Germany
attack on a secondary school, using chemical poisons (smoke grenades) as secondary weapons; 37 victims (0 killed, 37 injured); perpetrator – male, age at the time of the crime – 18, former student of the school;

November 12, 2019, Kaiyuan, China
attack on an elementary school, using chemical poisons (toxic powder), 54 victims (0 killed, 54 injured), perpetrator – male, age at the time of the crime – 23;

December 2, 2024, Berlin, Germany
attack on an elementary school using chemical poisons (tear gas), 44 victims (0 killed, 44 injured), suspect fled, crime unsolved, identity of perpetrator unknown;

February 4, 2025, Erebro, Sweden
attack on a secondary school, using (as an auxiliary weapon) chemical poisons (smoke grenades), 22 victims (10 killed, 12 wounded), perpetrator - male, age at the time of the crime - 35 years old;

December 16, 2025, Odintsovo, Russia
attack on a secondary school, using (as an auxiliary weapon) chemical poisons (tear gas), 4 victims (1 killed, 3 wounded), age at the time of the crime - 15 years old, a student at the school.

As can be seen from the description, the criminals mainly used tear gas or poisonous smoke; in one case, the criminal sprayed toxic powder in the premises. In three out of five cases, the attackers used poisonous substances as additional weapons and only in two cases as the sole weapon.  I have not found any cases of attacks on educational institutions involving the deliberate poisoning of food or drink as a means of committing a crime, although I fully admit that they may have occurred but were not reported to the police or the media.

I would suggest that in this case, we are dealing with a new method of committing crimes such as deliberate mass harm to health or murder. Given the active discussion of this fact in the media, social networks, and forums, there is a high probability that a similar scenario could well be repeated in the near future.

I invite everyone who is involved in or simply interested in the field of applied criminology, such as the security of schools and other educational institutions, to participate in the development of effective, practical methods for preventing and suppressing threats committed in the following manner: deliberate poisoning of food or beverages with dangerous chemicals (or naturally occurring components) with the aim of mass murder or causing harm to human health.

You can contact the author in any convenient way listed on his page.

Author – Roman Grishin.

 

* The crime took place at a lyceum in the village of Kuyuki, Pestrechinsky District, Republic of Tatarstan, Russia.

** There is partially confirmed data on a series of attacks using poisonous substances in schools and higher education institutions in Iran in 2022-2023. Unfortunately, Iran's information secrecy does not allow us to obtain accurate data on the circumstances of the crimes (if they occurred at all) established by law enforcement agencies for analysis and publication in the handbook.

 

#SchoolSafety #assault #poisoning #threat #chemicals #murder #harm #children #schools #safety #criminology

Safety of educational and childcare facilities in 2025, preliminary results, new threats, forecast for 2026

Note: it should be borne in mind that the author lives and works in Russia, so in this article, he considers the situation on the example of his country. Measures to ensure the safety of schools, other educational institutions and places with a mass stay of children that he proposes are developed by him for use in Russia, taking into account the existing law enforcement system and the situation there.

Work is currently nearing completion on an updated version of the Handbook of Crimes and Terrorist Acts in Schools and Other Educational Institutions, which will include some corrections and additions for previous periods, as well as statistics for 2025. Taking into account the opinions and wishes expressed by colleagues, the form for submitting certain statistical data will be supplemented. I will provide more details about the new edition of the Handbook in an accompanying article to its publication.

Some preliminary conclusions about the security situation in schools and other educational and childcare institutions can already be drawn.

1. The negative trend continues.

Even for the incomplete year of 2025, crime rates have increased compared to both 2024 and the average for the most recent period (2020-2024). The increase is observed both in the total number of serious and particularly serious crimes and in incidents with signs of mass murders and terrorist acts.

2. The level of security in educational institutions remains low.

The vast majority of crimes are committed directly on the premises of educational institutions using weapons or explosive devices. This circumstance clearly indicates that the criminals entered the premises of the educational institution unhindered, carried weapons with them, and carried out their planned crime.

3. Using teenagers to carry out terrorist acts.

So far, this phenomenon is more common in Russia. Teenagers, following instructions from anonymous «curators» in messengers and social networks, commit arson or mine energy facilities, transport, cars, and police premises, as well as other law enforcement agencies. There are no exact statistics, but according to Russian media reports, 47 such crimes were committed in the first quarter of 2025. The main motives for committing these crimes are threats of violence, blackmail, and the promise of financial reward.

Although most of these crimes are committed in Russia (although there are isolated cases in other countries), this practice is rapidly spreading to other countries. Terrorist organizations and criminal communities are quick learners and closely monitor such «cutting-edge criminal experience».

Earlier, in my articles on PMC Ryodan and Red Dolphin, I expressed my opinion and made predictions that such crimes would be committed more often, that these cases were only a test and assessment of the possibilities of using teenagers, both individually and in groups, to commit crimes and terrorist acts with the possibility of anonymous, remote control of their actions. Unfortunately, as practice has shown, this experiment has been successful.

4. Dangerous precedents have been set in Nigeria.

In November 2025, within a span of four days, two organized, group, armed attacks on schools were carried out in Nigeria. In both cases, the aim of the attacks was to take hostages.

In the first case, on November 17 in the city of Magha, during an attack on a school, the deputy director was killed and a security guard was wounded, and 25 students were taken hostage.

In the second case, on November 21, in the city of Papiri, there were no deaths or injuries during the attack on the school, but more than 300 students and 12 teachers were taken hostage.

These cities are located in border states, less than 200 kilometers apart. After the first kidnapping, the Nigerian government launched a police operation and tightened security measures. However, this did not prevent the criminals from carrying out an even more daring attack four days later and taking 10 times more hostages.

Similar attacks have been carried out in Nigeria before, but not on such a scale. The last similar case (in terms of the number of people kidnapped) occurred there 11 years ago, in April 2014, when militants from a terrorist group kidnapped 276 high school students, 94 of whom have still not been released.

All this indicates that educational institutions have been and remain an easily accessible target for criminals and terrorists. They perceive children as a resource (a tool) with which they can commit crimes and terrorist acts with impunity, while remaining hundreds and thousands of kilometers away.

Forecast: The current situation clearly shows that the existing system for containing this threat is not working, and no effective system for actively countering it has yet been created. This means that in 2026, we should not expect any positive changes; at best, the situation will remain at its current level.

Author and Editor-in-Chief of the project - Roman Grishin.

#schoolsafety #crime #terrorism #victims #threats #safety #security #children #schools #college #kindergarten #university #statistics #summarizingresults #forecast #future

A unified approach to assessing safety in educational institutions

Note: it should be borne in mind that the author lives and works in Russia, so in this article, he considers the situation on the example of his country. Measures to ensure the safety of schools, other educational institutions and places with a mass stay of children that he proposes are developed by him for use in Russia, taking into account the existing law enforcement system and the situation there.

Often, after another tragedy, in expert discussions addressing the protection of educational institutions, participants use the term «security level» with various adjectives such as high, low, satisfactory, unsatisfactory, compliant, minimal, etc. However, the question arises: what exactly do they mean by this concept? What can this level be, how is it determined, and what factors influence it?
After studying publicly available information on these issues, I concluded that there is currently no unified (or even widely accepted) system for formally assessing the security level of educational facilities. Most reports containing such evaluations and conclusions are based on the personal opinions of the specialists who prepared them, relying on compliance with regulatory documents, as well as numerous guidelines, recommendations, and informational letters from the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Federal Security Service, the National Guard, and other executive and local government bodies. These documents mostly contain general, and often vague, wording, making it difficult to judge how accurate and objective the conclusions drawn from them are.

After reviewing publicly available foreign practices, I also found nothing concrete; the situation on this issue appears to be similar there, despite the clear need for such a tool.
I am not a proponent of excessive standardization in security matters, but I consider this area an exception. Due to the absence of an assessment system that could, based on formal criteria, objectively calculate the security level of an educational facility with minimal influence from the «human factor»—and since I need such a tool in my work—I decided to try creating it myself.

The table presented in this article is intended to assess the security level of an educational institution against criminal and terrorist threats. The evaluation is based on 64 criteria, covering:

- Characteristics of the educational facility’s territory and location,

- Buildings and structures,

- Presence of physical security and its specifics,

- Technical security measures and their capabilities,

- Additional active and passive protective measures.

Each item, if present and—just as importantly—fully operational, is assigned the number of points indicated in the table. If absent or non-functional (fully or partially), it receives 0 points, and so on for all items. The points are then summed to produce a final score. In addition to the total score, there are factors that negatively affect the final assessment, all of which are outlined in the «Final Score Calculation Formula» section.
When completed, the table clearly shows the level of protection of the educational institution against criminal and terrorist threats, its capabilities, and, most importantly, obvious shortcomings and vulnerabilities in the security system. Based on the resulting score, measures and costs for improving the facility’s protection level can be planned.
Furthermore, using annual assessment data for one or multiple facilities, comparative and trend analysis can easily be conducted, clearly evaluating the situation in this area for a specific school, city, region, or even country over a given period—comparing both overall scores and individual indicators or sections. This is a convenient and, most importantly, objective tool for monitoring the situation. A decrease in the score, even by 1 point compared to the previous period, will immediately indicate a worsening situation and the need for action.

Author’s note: I believe that once completed, this table should be classified as at least «For Official Use Only» (or preferably with a higher restriction level), with very limited access granted to its contents. This information is too critical, and if it falls into the hands of someone planning a mass killing or terrorist attack, it could become a «lethal weapon,» significantly increasing the number of potential victims...

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Need help from a psychologist in writing an article

(address of one of the authors of the project):

The question is rather not to established professionals, but to those who are still at the beginning of the path, who are interested in mastering new and non-standard, enthusiasts, who have not yet been swallowed up by routine or «star disease», who still have creative aspiration.

If briefly and essentially: I need a co-author for an article (not scientific, but applied), the direction - criminal psychology, behavior analysis (profiling), the theme of the article – «Ensuring the safety of schools, other educational institutions and places with a mass stay of children from threats of criminal and terrorist nature», the section for co-authorship - (the name is still conditional) «Development, implementation and effective use of behavioral analysis techniques in the activities of patrol units of specialized police services».

A "small" preface to make it clear what we are talking about.

I started studying this problem a long time ago. I did not try to look for social, moral, medical, philosophical, religious or conspiracy reasons and sources of this threat (I will leave it to political scientists), for two reasons, first: in my opinion, in this case we are dealing not with the rule but with exceptions to it, this is not part of a system, each "school shooter" is unique in its own way and each such tragedy should be treated as a separate case, I fully share Dr. Peter Langman's opinion that there is no single psychotype of a «school shooter» and finding one is a utopia. The second reason: while specialists are searching for the «root of the problem» in the field of high materia medica, murders and other types of crimes against children continue, which means that it is necessary to develop a system of measures to prevent, deter and directly suppress these threats until the source of their occurrence is not (if ever) found and eliminated. I have focused my efforts on exploring the possibilities of directly countering these threats.

I looked at statistics, the specifics of the perpetration, as well as the dynamics of similar cases in other countries, read police reports, expert opinions, other analytics, compared, analyzed. The results did not inspire optimism; the situation turned out to be much worse than I had originally thought. The main conclusion was that in the 21st century, schools, other educational institutions (including universities and kindergartens), as well as places where children are present in large numbers, have become high-risk objects, where the number of threats, their level and the degree of danger are constantly growing, while meeting virtually no resistance. Then I turned my attention to developments in the field of countering these threats. I was particularly interested in the approach to solving the issue of ensuring the security of educational institutions in the U.S., and more specifically in two megacities: New York and Los Angeles, despite the fact that these are the two largest cities in the U.S. (taking into account agglomerations, they are home to almost 10% of the country's population), over the past 20 years (according to FBI surveys) there have been almost no serious attacks on educational institutions there, there have been isolated incidents (1 in each city), in both cases there were no fatalities. In my opinion, this is the result of a special approach to security in educational institutions in these cities, I will not tell you for a long time .

Taking these two units as a basis, I tried to adapt the principles of their activities to the realities in Russia, also supplemented with some of my own suggestions and developments. As a result, I got a draft model of "Integrated security system of schools, other educational institutions, as well as other organizations and with mass attendance of children, from threats of terrorist and criminal nature.

I analyzed the situation in this direction, my forecasts and proposals in my article, which I first published in May 2019. After that, I supplemented it several times, taking into account new tragedies. The last change I made in January 2022, after which I decided not to make additions to the existing publication, and began to work on a new, more extensive in the level of materials for analysis, and most importantly, concrete proposals for prevention and suppression of not only existing but also future threats, covering more areas of possible effective use of the proposed model through its improvement and flexibility. Here I finish with the preface and come to the point.

What kind of help do I need? I briefly described the situation in my already published article, Part 2, section «Some issues of staffing and training of school security units», where I propose to improve the professional level of officers of one of the units serving on the streets by training them in the methods of behavioral analysis. However, here we are talking about a completely different tactic of its use, it should be a kind of express-method, allowing employees, by certain signs and actions, to identify in the flow of people those who have plotted to commit a particularly dangerous crime, such as a mass murder or terrorist act.

Immediately I want to get ahead of the arguments of skeptics that filtering the flow of people in order to identify persons with suspicious behavior, using methods of behavioral analysis is ineffective, and an experienced criminal can easily bypass it. I will not object, it is really true if we are talking about a professional. Here, however, we are dealing with completely different subjects, those for whom this crime is the first, and in most cases, the last in their lives. If it is a «School Shooter», the final action he planned is usually suicide. If it's a terrorist attack, the perpetrator will, in most cases, also be a suicide bomber. Simply put, in both cases we are dealing with amateurs. Accordingly, we cannot speak of any professional equanimity and self-control of these two categories of criminals. Often it is just the opposite - their behavior contains a large number of external signs of what they are up to. And if on their way there are people who are able to recognize these intentions, it will significantly increase the chances that the threat can be neutralized without victims, and this is the main goal.

The main question is: Is it realistic to develop a methodology for such behavioral analysis that can be used to filter the flow of people? It is clear that we are not talking about 100% efficiency, but at least about «with a high probability». If yes, this is the subject of the article, which I will insert as a separate section in the main publication with obligatory indication of authorship (and if necessary other requisites).  

I tell you right away that I do it only for myself, on a voluntary basis, I have no sponsors, no one pays me royalties (and I actually do not ask), so I can not pay for your work, so all on bare enthusiasm.

Thanks for reading, if you have any questions on the substance of the post, write in the comments.

To contact the author, please write to romangrishin86@gmail.com