The Zagreb court sentenced twenty-year-old LM to 50 years in prison in the first instance for the aggravated murder of a child in an elementary school in Zagreb, four aggravated attempted murders, and 50 other criminal offenses.
He was sentenced to 30 years for the aggravated murder of a child, and 22 years each for the three attempted murders of children and a teacher.
He received two years for violating the rights of the child for all 50 students who witnessed the attack, Croatian media reported.
The sentencing was closed to the public, as was the entire court proceedings, and the perpetrator was not present at his request, the Beta news agency reported.
The parents of the boy killed in the attack were not in the courtroom either.
The verdict was first announced to the victims' families, the accused, his defense, and prosecutors, and only then to journalists.
"This case has shown all the anomalies of a system that failed to recognize and prevent not only the abstract, but also the concrete danger that the perpetrator had shown before," said Krešimir Škarica, one of the lawyers for the victims' families.
"There are no losers or winners in this process," Škarica noted.
Marko Sikirica, representative of the Parents' Council of the Prečko Elementary School, emphasized that the verdict is very emotional.
"Unfortunately, we live in a divided society and we are sorry that the system that was supposed to be with us and support our children ended up disappointing them," he said. Croatian Radio and Television broadcasts.
The indictment from the Zagreb prosecutor's office states that the then 19-year-old, "a former student of that school, on December 20, 2024, came to the Zagreb elementary school during class with the premeditated intention of taking the lives of children and school employees."
On that occasion, he attacked the teacher and the children with a knife, and during the attack, one child was killed, while the teacher and three children suffered serious physical injuries.
The attack was witnessed by about a dozen students.
In Croatia, after that attack, special security measures were introduced for schools, which include mandatory locking and hiring security guards.
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