At least 10 killed in shooting at Austrian high school, police say

By Christopher F. Schuetze and Jim Tankersley

A former student at an Austrian high school opened fire on the campus Tuesday and killed 10 people before apparently killing himself, a rare and shocking episode of the sort of gun violence that is far more common in the United States than in Europe.

The killings in Graz, a wealthy university town that is Austria’s second-largest city, were among the worst European school shootings in years. It was the deadliest such attack in memory at an Austrian school, and it profoundly rattled the small Alpine nation.

Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker cleared his schedule to travel to Graz and declared three days of national mourning.

Stocker said in a post on social media that “The shooting rampage at a school in Graz is a national tragedy that has deeply shaken our entire country.”

State police said the shooter was a 21-year-old who had previously attended the school, BORG Dreierschützengasse, but never graduated. He killed six females and three males on campus, whom police did not publicly identify. Another victim, a woman, later died at a hospital. Authorities said they would not release more information on the victims, including how many of them were students, until preliminary investigations had finished.

The shooter was found dead in a school bathroom. Police said he had arrived at the school carrying a pistol and a longer gun — they did not clarify whether it was a shotgun or a rifle — that he had legally bought. Officers recovered the weapons Tuesday.

Investigators began gathering evidence Tuesday and asked for witnesses to upload video or photos to a secure website.

It was the sort of incident that has become a regular occurrence across America in recent years. Every year since 2021, the nonprofit K-12 School Shooting Database has tracked more than 50 school shootings during instructional time in the United States.

Europe’s high-profile school shootings are far less frequent.

They include a seventh-grader who killed eight children in 2023 in Serbia and a teenager who killed 15 people in a rampage that began at a school near Stuttgart, Germany, in 2009.

European nations typically restrict firearm ownership far more than the United States does. Researchers say the lower availability of guns is linked with the lower rate of school shootings on the Continent compared with America, though not an ironclad explanation for them.