Nine minors dead in Crimea school shooting, youngest 15

Last updated on: 18 October,2018 04:22 pm

The city of Kerch published a list Thursday of the 19 identified dead in the morning.

KERCH (AFP) - A 15-year-old boy was the youngest to die when a teenage gunman attacked his college in the Crimean city of Kerch, while at least nine of the dead were minors, authorities said.

The city of Kerch published a list Thursday of the 19 identified dead in the morning.

The youngest of them, Sergei Stepanenko, was 15.

One of the girls who died, 16-year-old Darya Chegerest, known as "Dasha", "tried to help others" as the attack unfolded but was killed, her fellow first-year student Viktoria Voiko told AFP.

An unnamed student told the Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid she saw Chegerest die.

"I saw my friend Dasha get killed. She was running next to me, and then she fell and wasn’t breathing any more," said the student who was in a state of hysteria.

 


Ball bearing bomb


 

 

Relatives of another of the named dead, 16-year-old Alina Kerova, had been desperately searching for her the day before, knowing that she was in the building at the time, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported.

Kerova’s best friend, 17-year-old Viktoria Demchuk, is among the wounded, Komsomolskaya Pravda wrote. Her social media page shows a smiling girl with long dark hair.

Among the adult dead was a maths teacher at the college, 57-year-old Svetlana Baklanova, and her 26-year-old daughter Anastasia Baklanova who also worked at the college, handling finance and tax issues, reported Moskovsky Komsomolets daily.

City authorities published a list of 42 wounded, saying that two more had not been identified.

Health minister Veronika Skvortsova told journalists that most of those who died suffered gunshot wounds.

Many of those hospitalised were injured by an explosion that blasted metal ball bearings and other items into their bodies, ripping into organs.

She said the explosion made "mincemeat" of the victims and several had limbs amputated.