At least 15 dead, including gunman, after university shooting in central Prague
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Transcript
00:00 What happened was today at about 3 p.m. there were reports that there was a shooting incident
00:04 at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University.
00:08 It's right in the city center.
00:09 It's a short walk from the Old Town Square, which I'm sure many viewers will know.
00:14 It's also by the river, and it's an area many tourists would often be in.
00:19 And the area was sealed off immediately.
00:22 Even trams were diverted in that part of Prague.
00:26 And at about 4 o'clock, the police reported that the assailant was dead.
00:30 It's still not clear if he killed himself or if the police shot him dead.
00:35 But before his death, he managed to shoot dead more than, or at least 15 people is how
00:41 they're describing it, including one police officer.
00:46 Dozens more were injured, and many of these people have been taken to hospitals around
00:51 Prague.
00:52 Survivors of this horrific incident are already getting kind of immediate trauma counseling.
00:57 People barricaded themselves into classrooms and other places in the Faculty of Arts during
01:03 today's terrible, terrible incident.
01:06 And right now, the Czech government is having an emergency meeting to discuss the terrible
01:12 events of today.
01:13 Yeah, I'm assuming there's a huge sense of shock there in the Czech capital.
01:19 I mean, what more do we know from what the authorities are saying about possible motives?
01:24 Well, there is an intense feeling of shock here in the Czech Republic tonight.
01:30 The assailant was 24 years old.
01:32 He was from a town near Prague.
01:34 And as we heard earlier, he killed his father earlier in the day, then made his way to the
01:40 capital.
01:41 And also, he made some kind of social media posting on the Telegram network saying that
01:49 he was out to cause maximum destruction and that he hated the world.
01:56 He didn't have a gun license, but it's clear he somehow got access to weapons.
02:01 Getting a gun in the Czech Republic is not so difficult.
02:05 But at the same time, the kind of incident we've seen today is highly, highly unusual
02:09 and in fact, unprecedented.
02:11 We've never seen here any kind of what you might consider U.S. style university or school
02:16 shootings in the Czech Republic.
02:18 It's another reason people are very shocked this evening.
02:22 And the incident today is actually being described as the most tragic shooting event ever in
02:30 the modern history of the Czech Republic.