A high school student in Finland shot and killed himself, six other students, and the school principal yesterday “after announcing plans for the rampage on YouTube,” the Financial Times reports. The FT cites a Reuters reports saying the boy’s video was “called ‘Jokela High School Massacre’ and posted by a user called Sturmgeist89, meaning Storm Spirit in German. The video’s musical backing was a song called Stray Bullet.” The Washington Post reports reports that “the song was a favorite of Eric Harris, one of the Columbine High School shooters, who had featured the band’s lyrics on his Web site.” According to the FT, “there have been occurrences around the world, including the death of 16 children in 1996 in Dunblane, UK, the 1999 killing of 12 students at the Columbine High School in Colorado, the 2002 deaths of 18 in Erfurt, Germany and this year’s killing of 32 at Virginia Tech University in the US.” The Times of London looked at what’s unique to Finland about this tragedy.
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