2023 Prague shootings
Mass murder in the Czech Republic / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
On 21 December 2023, 14 people were killed and 22 injured in a mass shooting at the main Faculty of Arts building of Charles University in central Prague, Czech Republic. Another three people were injured when the perpetrator opened fire towards the streets from the faculty's fourth-floor rooftop terrace.[4][5][6][7][8][9] After having been engaged by the police, the perpetrator, 24-year-old postgraduate student David Kozák, committed suicide by shooting himself.[10][11][12] Before the attack, his father was found dead at his home in Hostouň.
2023 Prague shootings | |
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Location | Prague and Hostouň, Czech Republic |
Coordinates | 50°05′21″N 14°24′58″E |
Date | 15 and 21 December 2023 14:59 – 15:20 (CET, UTC+1) |
Target | Students and staff at Faculty of Arts, Charles University |
Attack type | School shooting, mass shooting, mass murder, spree shooting, murder–suicide, patricide |
Weapons | Inside: Glock semi-automatic pistol, Škorpion semi-automatic pistol Rooftop: ZEV AR-10 .308 semi-automatic rifle |
Deaths | 18 (1 indirectly; including the perpetrator and his father)[lower-alpha 1][lower-alpha 2][1] |
Injured | 25 |
Perpetrator | David Kozák[2][3] |
Motive | Unknown |
At the time of the shooting, the perpetrator was one in a pool of about 4,000 suspects in a double murder case that took place six days earlier, 25 kilometres (16 mi) away, when a father and his infant daughter were murdered in Klánovice. The lead investigator confirmed that the police had not yet reviewed the perpetrator's potential as a suspect in the earlier killings when the Prague shootings took place, but evidence found in the latter event did link the two incidents.
The attack was the deadliest mass murder in the Czech Republic since its independence in 1993, surpassing the 2020 Bohumín arson attack.[13][14][15]