David Kozak Prague mass shooter killed father & newborn in dry run week before Thursday’s mass school shooting at Charles University. Authorities had yet to locate gunman.
The 24 year old student gunman who shot dead 15 and injured 25 at the University in Prague is now suspected of shooting dead a man and his newborn baby in a ‘random’ attack at a forest near the Czech capital last week, police said. The shooting is thought to have been a dry run for the gunman’s planned mass school shooting in Prague on Thursday.
David Kozak, 24, killed 14 people and injured 25 during a rampage in which he targeted students at his university in downtown Prague, police said, adding that he was shot dead after carrying out the horrific attack. Conflicting reports told of the gunman taking his own life after gunning down his victims amid updated reports.
Kozak in an evening press brief was revealed to have murdered his father in the town of Hostoun before making the two-hour journey into the Czech capital where he began randomly shooting people from the balcony of Charles University Arts faculty.
Prague University shooter named as David Kozak who murdered dad before horror spree.
The gunman who opened fire was a philosophy student who is allegedly linked to other deaths in a nearby village. pic.twitter.com/xUuGzM5L94— Letsgobrandon (@Letsgobrannndon) December 21, 2023
‘I want to do a school shooting and possibly suicide.’
The suspected gunman had a huge arsenal of weapons and ammunition with him, with the country’s Interior Minister saying that ‘if the police hadn’t entered the building in time, the perpetrator wouldn’t have been dead on the roof and there would have been a lot more victims.’
In the lead up to his killing spree, Kozak was revealed to have kept a diary in Russian on messaging app Telegram, writing in one chilling post: ‘I want to do a school shooting and possibly suicide.’
Now it has emerged that police are investigating whether Kozak may have killed a father and his two-month-old daughter in Klanovice, near Prague. Hundreds of police combed the wooded area after the perpetrator disappeared, and authorities are currently probing whether the two killing sprees could be linked, local media reported.
Thursday’s massacre is the Czech Republic’s worst ever mass shooting, and the gunman is believed to have been inspired by a school shooting carried out by 14-year-old schoolgirl, Alina Afanaskina in Russia earlier this month.
‘I want to do school shooting and possibly suicide, Alina Afanaskina helped me too much,’ David Kozak allegedly wrote on December 10 of the Bryansk school shooter, who killed two students before taking her own life.
The chilling post in what the writer called their ‘diary’ about ‘life before the shooting’ went on: ‘I always wanted to kill, I thought I would become a maniac in the future.’
Less than a week after the disturbing posts appeared online, a father and baby girl were shot dead in Klanovice, a forest area outside of Prague.
Random victims sacrificed for diabolical fantasy
‘We are working very seriously with the fact that the attacker from the Faculty of Philosophy is also responsible for the two victims from the end of last week in Klanovicky les,’ police spokesman Martin Vondráček said.
‘As far as Klanovicky les is concerned, it is not known that the victims were in any way connected to the perpetrator. I am convinced that the victims were completely randomly selected by a person without any criminal history,’ he added.
The suspect in the killings has been on the loose since the shooting on Friday December 15. Police launched a major manhunt but made limited progress.
They appealed to the public to help in the search last week, saying: ‘We are looking for basically anything related to the case to move it forward. Logically, the murder weapon is the main thing.’
The case is now being linked to Thursday’s bloody attack on the historic heart of Prague.
No known motive was immediately known as to what led to David Kozak unleashing on fellow students at Charles University as a horrified Europe and world looked on at an import of terror and violence often common and synonymous at American schools and colleges.
