Man held over shooting massacre in Serbia

Police today arrested a man suspected of killing nine people and injuring another two in a shooting spree hours earlier in an eastern Serbian village.

Nikola Radosavljevic, 38, was found at the local cemetery hours after the Friday night rampage in Jabukovac, a village near the border with Bulgaria, police said in a statement.

There was no immediate explanation as to why the gunman opened fire with a hunting rifle, killing five men and four women who had been passing by on the street, police said. Another two people were seriously wounded.

Police said the suspect, Radosavljevic, had recently returned to his village from Austria, where he works, and had had an argument with his wife before the incident. They gave no information about the wife.

Serbian state television showed footage of the suspect, his clothes soaked in what appeared to be blood, being pushed by officers into a police van.

Radosavljevic was later transferred to a hospital in the southern city of Nis, where he was treated for chest injuries and broken ribs, and was examined by a psychiatrist, a local doctor told Serbian television.

Dr Dragoslav Miljkovic told local media the two wounded, who were in the same hospital, no longer were in life-threatening condition. He said one was a 70-year-old woman, and the other was a 36-year-old man.

Police had dispatched special police units and helicopters to search for the gunman, who fled on foot after the shooting. They sealed off the village, while frightened residents locked themselves inside their homes, Serbian media said.

Officers found the suspect sitting by his parents’ grave at the cemetery, according to the TV news report. It said the suspect reportedly tried to kill himself, but police prevented him.

“This is a huge tragedy,” Interior Minister Dragan Jocic said. “There could be no rational explanation” for such an act.

TV footage showed bodies lying on the ground in the dark, some with candles on the side, apparently lit by relatives as is a custom here.

One elderly man, whose wife died in the shooting, told state TV the gunman had pushed open the gate of their family home and chased the women who tried to run to the garage.

“I am all alone now,” the man said. The TV report did not identify him by name.

A young woman, breaking into tears, said on TV that her 36-year-old sister had been killed.

State television reported that the victims included a 15-year-old.