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Details Emerge In Slaying Of 8 At Finnish School

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By JARI TANNER, The Associated Press

Published: November 9, 2007

HELSINKI, Finland - A bullied teenage outcast with radical views scribbled a suicide note bidding farewell to his family before unleashing an indiscriminate killing campaign at his high school, police said Thursday.

As the grim details emerged of a premeditated massacre by a youth consumed with anger against society, stunned Finns mourned the victims of his deadly rampage. Flags across the Nordic nation flew at half staff.

Armed with a semiautomatic handgun and 500 rounds of ammunition, 18-year-old Pekka-Eric Auvinen emptied nearly 20 rounds into some of his eight victims Wednesday, police said.

He also tried to set the school building on fire in what police said was a well-prepared attack that Auvinen had foreshadowed in Internet postings.

Grieving students placed candles outside the sealed-off high school in Tuusula, some 30 miles north of the capital, Helsinki.

A day of mourning was declared and memorial services were held across the country, including in Tuusula, a town of 34,000 people, where a church was turned into a crisis center with experts on hand to offer comfort.

The president attended a memorial service in the capital.

Bishop Mikko Heikka told the mourners in Helsinki Cathedral: "The violence at the Jokela school center has shocked us to our very core. This unbelievable incident has rendered us speechless in pain and distress."
Police spokesman Jan-Olof Nyholm said Auvinen left a suicide note "saying goodbye to his family and a message ... indicating his will against society." Police said he appeared bent on causing maximum bloodshed as he opened fire.

Police also seized books and other printed material that suggested Auvinen was angry at society and was planning an attack. "His opinions were extreme, and he had radical thoughts," Jan-Olof Nyholm said.

Investigators believe Auvinen revealed plans for the attack in postings on YouTube in which he urged revolution and grinned after taking target practice with a handgun.

One posting called for a popular uprising against "the enslaving, corrupted and totalitarian regimes."

"I am prepared to fight and die for my cause. I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see unfit, disgraces of human race and failures of natural selection," the posting said.

Finnish media said he posted similar messages in chat rooms just hours before the shooting spree.

Apparently selecting his victims randomly, Auvinen killed six fellow students, the school nurse and the principal before turning the gun on himself, police said. More than 400 students ages 12 to 18 were enrolled at the school.

"There's nothing that links him with the victims except that they attended the same school," Detective Superintendent Tero Haapala said. "But the explanation can be found mainly in his Web writings and his social behavior."

Haapala described Auvinen as a social outcast who was "bullied in school." Haapala suggested that the bullying may have helped lead to the violent behavior.

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