Austria, considered among the safest and most peaceful countries in the world, was clearly unprepared for such a traumatic shock. At around 10 am on Tuesday, June 10, a 21-year-old man entered his former high school in Graz, Austria's second-largest city, located 200 kilometers south of Vienna, and opened fire on students and teachers. After leaving a trail of death and destruction behind him – six women and three men were killed, including an as yet undetermined number of students – he killed himself in the toilets of the school, located a few hundred meters behind the main train station.

The death toll could rise further: Authorities reported 12 injured, two of whom were still in critical condition on Tuesday afternoon. Videos posted by neighbors on social media captured the sound of gunfire interrupted by screams coming from the large gray three-story building in a residential district of this university city of 300,000 people. "I saw one wounded person. A mother couldn't find her child. Another person didn't get back up," Sandra Roller, who lives across from the school, told the tabloid Kronen Zeitung. "The parents ran to the school, passing by my restaurant, crying. Some children hid behind a fence near the playground," recounted the owner of a kebab restaurant located about a hundred meters from the school.

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