A Brief History
On May 3, 2023, a 13 year old Serbian schoolboy opened fire at an elementary school in Belgrade, Serbia, killing nine students and a security guard. An additional six people were wounded. Incredibly, due to Serbian law, the shooter was not criminally prosecuted due to his age!
Digging Deeper
The teenaged shooter used his father’s legally owned pistols in the event, firing 57 shots during the attack.
Although not charged criminally, the shooter did wind up under psychiatric care. His parents, in a scenario eerily similar to a recent case in the US, found themselves in legal trouble, charged with crimes against public safety and child neglect. The guns were apparently under lock by electronic means, although the shooter cracked the code to access the pistols.
Serbians narrowly avoided another school shooting tragedy in 2019 when a shooter fired two shots into a school ceiling but was overpowered before he could shoot any persons.
Question for students (and subscribers): What age is old enough to be charged with a crime? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
If you liked this article and would like to receive notification of new articles, please feel welcome to subscribe to History and Headlines by liking us on Facebook and becoming one of our patrons!
Your readership is much appreciated!
Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Kupchik, Aaron. Judging Juveniles: Prosecuting Adolescents in Adult and Juvenile Courts. NYU Press, 2007.
May, Casandra. When Children Kill. Kindle, 2023.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by Andrija12345678 of police in the front of the school following the shooting, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
