Shooting at the Faculty of Philosophy: The killer was already there an hour before the shooting, when the police were looking for him!

According to the newspaper, which refers to police documents, the students saw the killer in the building around two o’clock, roughly an hour before the shooting was reported – the first report of the shooting came to the emergency line at 2:59 p.m. A linguistics class was scheduled to begin at 2:10 p.m. on the 4th floor of the building, and some of the students later described to police during questioning that they had seen the shooters in the hallways shortly before the class began.

At the same time, police patrol Alka 726 was looking for the student in the Faculty of Philosophy building – they searched for him on the ground floor, in the canteen and in the library, as well as in the corridor one floor above. There they also visited the study department and the Institute of World History on the floor above. “The patrol learned from everyone they talked to on the grounds of the Faculty of Philosophy on Palach Square that the person in question was armed, he has suicidal thoughts, and if they see him, they should call 158,” the newspaper quotes a report on the data obtained by the Internal Control Office of the Police Presidium.

Former ČSSD deputy chairman Lubomír Zaorálek, who was giving a lecture on the third floor at the time, also confirmed that the shooter was probably already in the building around two o’clock. “When we subsequently sat down and reconstructed what happened, that’s what (the students) told me. That they saw him, but not on the top floor, but on the lower ones,” he said, adding that according to the students, he was wearing civilian clothes at the time, not the black one in which he then shot.

It follows from the documents that the police were in the building several times. She stated earlier that two three-man patrols were sent to the school already at half past two. According to the documents, other patrols of the emergency motorized unit and also an emergency vehicle were deployed along with them, but it is not clear where exactly it was located.

Police officers in the building

One of the library staff also confirmed the presence of police officers after 2 p.m. “When I was entering the building of the University of Philosophy, roughly between 14:00 and 14:20, I was approached by two uniformed police officers who showed me a photo with the information that it was an armed suicide bomber. Because I was worried that he might be in our library, I led them there,” he said. A plainclothes police officer also appeared at the faculty before the shooting – he arrived at the study department shortly before half past three and asked about the shooter’s schedule. Then the policeman left.

At 2:38 p.m., the police located the shooter’s phone in Pařížská street, a short distance from the school, but with regard to the map of transmitters and receivers of the phone signal, this means that he could have already been at the school at that time. The police and the General Inspectorate of the Security Forces do not want to comment on further details, saying that the conclusions of the investigation are awaited.

Austrian: The discussion must not end

At Thursday’s press conference, Minister of the Interior Vít Rakušan (STAN) commented on the shooting at the faculty. “There are two investigations here, one is led by the General Inspectorate of the Security Forces, and the minister has no influence on this one, for God’s sake, because she controls us, our files, and then it’s the public prosecutor’s office in Prague, which is investigating multiple murders that took place on three different places. It’s a complex investigation, and here again not even the Minister of the Interior, but even the police, has the ability to somehow speed up the deadlines set by the public prosecutor’s office,” he said about the investigation.

“We feel that the discussion in the public space has not ended, it must not end. There are a number of questions that need to be answered. For me, they are probably the most important, what was the motive, whether the perpetrator did not call for help somewhere, whether the help system failed somewhere for a long time, who could detect that this is a person who has some violent tendencies, either suicidal or, unfortunately, as it turned out, murderous as well,” he added.