Kauhajoki school shooting
The Kauhajoki school shooting occurred on 23 September 2008 at the Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences (SeAMK) in Kauhajoki, Finland. The gunman, 22-year-old student Matti Juhani Saari, shot and killed ten people with a Walther P22 Target semi-automatic pistol, before shooting himself in the head. He died a few hours later at Tampere University Hospital. One woman was injured but remained in stable condition.
| Kauhajoki school shooting | |
|---|---|
A scene of the Kauhajoki vocational college campus a few hours after the shooting | |
| Location | Kauhajoki, Finland |
| Coordinates | 62°25′45″N 22°10′54″E |
| Date | 23 September 2008 c. 10:40–12:13 (UTC+3) |
| Target | Kauhajoki School of Hospitality |
Attack type | School shooting, mass murder, murder–suicide, arson, copycat crime |
| Weapons |
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| Deaths | 11 (including the perpetrator) |
| Injured | 11 (1 by gunfire) |
| Perpetrator | Matti Juhani Saari |
| Motive | Misanthropy |
The shooting took place at the Kauhajoki School of Hospitality, owned by the Seinäjoki Municipal Federation of Education. The facilities and campus were shared between SeAMK and the Seinäjoki Vocational Education Centre – Sedu. Saari was a second-year student in a Hospitality Management undergraduate degree programme. The incident was the second school shooting in less than a year in Finland, the other being the Jokela school shooting in November 2007, in which nine people including the gunman died. Before that, only one other school shooting had taken place in the country's history, in Rauma in 1989, leaving two people dead.