Home

Candles lit outside Czech hospital after deadly shooting

Reading Time: 2 minutes

People lit candles and laid flowers outside the entrance of a hospital in the eastern Czech city of Ostrava Tuesday evening, after a gunman killed six people before fleeing and fatally shooting himself in the head.

The attack happened in the waiting room in the early morning at the outpatient clinic of the University Hospital. Police said they received calls at 7:19 am and officers were on the scene five minutes later.

The 42-year-old shooter, identified as Ctirad Vitasek, fled the hospital after the attack, prompting a manhunt involving hundreds of officers. He later shot himself in the head in his car with a police helicopter flying overhead.

It was unclear what motivated the shooting in Ostrava, a city of 290 000 people 350 km east of the capital Prague and near the border with Poland.

The head of the regional police department said the attacker, who did not have a gun license and had a criminal record including instances of violence and theft, was silent as he carried out the shooting with a 9-millimetre Czech handgun.

It was the worst shooting in the Czech Republic, where gun crime is relatively rare since a man shot eight people dead and then killed himself at a restaurant in Uhersky Brod in 2015.

Author

MOST READ