On 7 November 2007, a mass shooting occurred at Jokela High School in the town of Jokela, Tuusula, Finland. The gunman, 18-year-old Pekka-Eric Auvinen, entered the school that morning armed with a semi-automatic pistol. He killed eight people and wounded one before shooting himself in the head; twelve others were also injured by flying glass or by spraining their ankles during the ensuing chaos. Auvinen died later that evening in a Helsinki hospital.
This was the second school shooting in the history of Finland, the first being the Raumanmeri school shooting in 1989, when a 14-year-old fatally shot two fellow students. The attack is the second-deadliest school shooting in Finnish history. Less than one year after the Jokela school massacre, the Kauhajoki school shooting occurred, which is thought to have been heavily inspired by Auvinen.
Preparations
Obtaining the gun
Auvinen had received his gun licence in October, then purchased a .22-calibre SIG Sauer Mosquito and 500 rounds of ammunition on 2 November, five days before the shooting. He was a registered member of the Helsinki Shooting Club since 31 August. A club spokesman revealed that Auvinen had attended a single one-hour training session. He had been given the licence since he was a member of a local shooting club and held no previous criminal record.
The Finnish police require a shooting hobby to begin with a .22-calibre weapon. Auvinen initially wanted to purchase a 9mm Glock pistol, but the application was rejected by police on 12 October under the grounds that, due to its high firepower, the firearm was not suited for precision shooting, as Auvinen had hoped to use it for. He later successfully filed an application to purchase a .22-calibre Ruger MK III pistol, only to find on the day of the purchase that it was unavailable at the time. He then opted to purchase the SIG Sauer Mosquito instead, which he named “Catherine”.
Auvinen uploaded a video to YouTube prior to the shooting, declaring that he would carry out a "massacre", and uploaded a manifesto to a file-sharing website. His manifesto expressed anger at his social alienation and called on "strong-minded and intelligent individuals" to revolt against the "idiocracy" of the "weak-minded masses".
Weaponry
After Auvinen received his gun licence in October 2007, he purchased a .22-calibre SIG Sauer Mosquito and 500 rounds of ammunition on 2 November 2007, five days before the shooting. Auvinen also used two-stroke engine fuel during the shooting in a failed attempt to set the school on fire.
File package
Before setting off on his rampage, Auvinen uploaded a file package containing twenty-one media files to the Internet. It contained pictures of himself, his firearm, Jokela High School, one undisclosed music file, and three documents in Finnish and English.
Natural Selector's Manifesto
The longest text was the Natural Selector's Manifesto, in which Auvinen explained his thoughts and rationale behind the shooting. He emphasized that he wanted his attack to be seen as not a mere school shooting but an outright act of terrorism. The text is an amalgamation of Auvinen's favourite philosophers, including Plato and Friedrich Nietzsche, and also contains references to Industrial Society and Its Future and Eric Harris, one of the perpetrators of the Columbine High School massacre. Auvinen proclaimed himself a "natural selector" who sought to eliminate what he considered weaknesses in humanity. In the manifesto, he refers to his attack as a war against the "weak-minded masses". Auvinen's manifesto contains Nazi and ecofascist themes.
Shooting
At approximately 11:40, Pekka-Eric Auvinen entered Jokela High School's ground-floor main hallway, having missed his first lesson. He encountered a student in the corridor and killed him at 11:42, then hid in the restroom. Some students heard the sound of gunshots but did not recognise them. Soon after, other students found the victim's body but assumed he was rendered unconscious from a bump to his head. Auvinen then fatally shot two more students, one of whom recognised him, from the restroom doorway. The school nurse then came to the scene, asking the students to flee the school, and afterwards, called emergency services. After shooting and killing another student outside the restroom, Auvinen ran after the nurse, caught up to her, and fatally shot her and another student at 11:46. At this point, Auvinen had claimed the lives of six people, therefore most of the shooting victims were killed within the first four minutes.
At 11:47, head teacher Helena Kalmi was alerted to the shooting by the deputy head teacher. She immediately ordered all students and teachers via PA system to barricade themselves inside their classrooms. After this, Auvinen began shouting and firing randomly, discharging his gun a total of 53 times in the corridors. At one point, he encountered the mother of a student as she was entering the school but spared her. Auvinen then attempted to enter a classroom, shooting three times through the barricaded door and hitting a student in the toe. Auvinen then moved on to the school's second floor and found two students, who did not hear the head teacher's announcement, sitting on a bench in the corridor. While one escaped uninjured, the other was shot and killed.
Auvinen began pouring two-stroke engine fuel (a petrol and oil mixture) on corridor walls and floors, but he was not able to ignite the fuel. He then went to the school canteen on the first floor and tried to enter, but the sliding glass doors were locked. After demanding to be let in, Auvinen fired through the glass, hitting some chairs inside. People hiding in the canteen were able to escape through the other end of the room and hid in the rooms behind the kitchen. No one in the canteen was injured.
At 11:54, Kalmi left the school with the education welfare officer and stopped between the building and a nearby pond to talk on the telephone. The education welfare officer went on ahead to the car park to guide rescue vehicles into the area. Auvinen, cursing, emerged from the school and encountered Kalmi, who tried to convince him to surrender. At 11:57, he shot her seven times in view of a group of students in the schoolyard, fatally wounding her.
Auvinen re-entered the school, went back to the first floor, and began walking around, knocking on classroom doors. He then managed to enter an occupied comprehensive-school classroom. Inside, he shouted orders at some of the students, proclaimed a revolution, and urged the students to destroy school property. Despite firing two shots at a television set and a window, Auvinen left the classroom without shooting anyone.
A few minutes later, Auvinen spotted the first responding police officers and paramedics converging at the area of the inner court. He fired a shot at them through a window, but the bullet failed to penetrate the glass. At 12:03, Auvinen took another position near the main entrance and fired two more shots at police officers who tried to approach and negotiate with him. No officers were hit. Soon afterwards, he walked into the restroom next to the canteen and threw his jacket and bag on the floor. After that, Auvinen shot himself in the head, ending the shooting at 12:04. Police found Auvinen laying on the floor of the bathroom and he was taken to the Töölö campus of Helsinki University Central Hospital at 14:45, where he died at 22:15 from the gunshot wound. The victims all sustained multiple injuries to the upper body and head.
Emergency response
The first emergency services call was reported at 11:43:14 by a student, though it was initially reported that the victim in question was bleeding from a bump on his head. The operator alerted two ambulances at 11:44:11. During the alert, gunshots were heard in the background, but the operator either did not hear them or was unable to identify them. The caller then tried to inform the operator that there was someone with a gun, but he was in a state of panic at the time and the operator could not understand the situation. At 11:46:38, it was finally determined that a shooter was involved, and the incident was reclassified as a shooting.
Police patrols were alerted, and the first officers arrived at the scene at 11:55 to begin evacuating students and staff from the building. Ambulances also arrived at the same time. In addition to officers from the local police department, officers from the Central Uusimaa, Hyvinkää, and Vantaa police departments, along with officers from a special readiness unit, were involved in the police response. The medical response consisted of a total of twelve ambulance units, along with two rescue units and a medical helicopter.
Despite reports of only one gunman, the police realised the information was not definite and considered the possibility of multiple assailants. They converged on the inner court, where they believed three or four victims were located according to information given by students, but found no bodies there. Meanwhile, between 12:05 and 12:15, a patrol blockading the pool beside the school building found Kalmi, alive but badly wounded. Basic life support was initiated on her, but despite these efforts she died of her injuries at the scene.
Between 12:35 and 12:37, an estimated 200 students and staff were evacuated from the school and relocated to a nearby centre. Readiness unit officers entered the school, and by 13:38, they found six of the victims, four in the hallway and the other two on a corridor stairway. At 13:54, they found Auvinen's body next to a men's lavatory near the canteen. Signs of life were detected, and he was moved out of the building to receive first aid. At 13:58, the officers found the last victim on the school's second floor. They believed he was still alive and moved him out of the school to receive first aid, but a doctor determined that the victim had already died by the time he was found.
By 14:29, the school was cleared, and no additional gunmen were found. A second inspection of the building was initiated for final confirmation, and the last students were evacuated by 15:17. The second inspection was completed at 15:40.
Victims
All of the following were killed in the shooting (excluding the perpetrator):
- Sameli "Same" Nurmi, male, 17 (student)
- Mika Petteri Pulkkinen, male, 17 (student)
- Ari Juhani Palsanen, male, 18 (student)
- Hanna Katariina Laaksonen Kinnunen, female, 25 (student)
- Sirkka Anneli Kaarakka, female, 43 (nurse)
- Mikko Tapani "Mikkous" Hiltunen, male, 17 (student)
- Ville Valtteri "Viltsi" Heinonen, male, 16 (student)
- Helena Kalmi, female, 61 (head teacher/principal)
Perpetrator
Pekka-Eric Auvinen was born on 4 June 1989 in Helsinki, Uusimaa, Finland. His father, a musician, named him after the guitarists Pekka Järvinen and Eric Clapton. Auvinen grew up in a stable family consisting of his parents and a younger brother. His parents reportedly became concerned about the violent content of some of the video games he played and confiscated and sold them. The family had lived in the same home for a decade. During his early school years, Auvinen developed normally and had friends. However, during adolescence, his academic performance declined and his social circle became increasingly limited. Auvinen reportedly had no friends in his later school years, although he discussed firearms and the possibility of carrying out a school shooting with others.
Between December 2006 and January 2007, Auvinen's parents tried to get him referred to a psychiatric outpatient clinic for his depression and anxiety, but the offer was refused due to his perceived mild symptoms. Instead, treatment using antidepressants was recommended to Auvinen's parents before any attempts to hospitalize him. Auvinen would go on to tell his online acquaintance that he would not be making it to military service the following months, leaving several other cryptic and homicidal messages with her the day before his attack. Auvinen had irregularly taken SSRIs one year prior to his death. Auvinen was frequently bullied at school and school students reported changes in his behavior to a youth worker, saying he acted threateningly and remarked that they would die in "a white revolution". One of his teachers described him as a militant radical who was interested in both far-right and far-left movements. Auvinen had apparently been planning the shooting since at least early March 2006 before he met any of the YouTubers or online gamers who had later been blamed for the massacre.