Finland Target to Copy-Cat School Threat

Finland is still in shock after Wednesday's slaughter at Tuusula and on this shaky ground threats found the perfect soil for seeding even more panic. Another video was posted on YouTube about a similar shooting that was supposed to take place in a town just 70 km from the original assault site.

Uploaded by a user with the screen name of Sturmgeist (the Wednesday killer's username was sturmgeist89) it said that the next target would be a middle school in Kirkkonummi. The news spread with the speed of sound and hundreds of children panicked and started running for their lives: mayhem had found its place. "One can imagine how the rumours spread when we have 1,300 pupils in the complex. This did not proceed calmly, there was panic," Maarit Rossi, the principal of Kirkkoharju told Reuters.

The officials naturally let the children leave school with parental permission and regular classes were suspended although the police regarded the threats aimed at Kirkkonummi as a sort of a "bad joke" and immediately started investigating into who posted the message on the web. The best case scenario is that a teenager studying at that school wanted a day off from school and decided to take advantage of the situation of the previous day.

"On Wednesday, 18-year-old Pekka-Eric Auvinen killed six fellow students, the school's principal and its nurse after posting a video on YouTube foreshadowing a massacre in nearby Tuusula," Reuters reminds. Afterwards he shot himself in the head and died later that night. He himself posted a video on YouTube that should have served as a warning for everyone, but there was no indication that anybody had seen the clip prior to the shooting. He was a militant anarchist and had obtained his license for owning a gun only 6 months before this incident took place.