With Serbia reeling from a school shooting that left nine dead and seven injured on May 3, the Belgrade area suffered a second mass shooting on May 4 when an attacker staged a drive-by in nearby Mladenovac—with an unnamed gunman leaving at least eight people dead and 14 wounded in his wake.
The drive-by appeared to be a purely random attack, with police immediately setting up a dragnet for an alleged 21-year-old suspect.
This shooting followed that committed at the Vladislav Ribnikar primary school by Kosta K., an incident that prompted candlelit vigils and three days of national mourning. Kosta K., too young to be tried on criminal charges in Serbia, was reportedly slated for a psychiatric institution. His parents on the other hand were reportedly arrested, even though the firearms in question were properly stored with a combination lock.
At press time, the Serbian Ministry of the Interior released information verifying that a suspect, U.B., born in 2002, was arrested near Kragujevac. The ministry noted that he is suspected of killing eight and wounding 14.
Reportedly, he passed through a series of villages firing an automatic weapon and handgun.
Photo by Petar Milošević, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.
