Teen fatally stabs 10-year-old at Moscow-area school after asking students about their ethnicity

A teenager attacked students with a knife at a school outside Moscow on Tuesday, killing one child. The first reports appeared on several Russian Telegram channels — Baza, 112, Mash, Shot, and Ostorozhno, Novosti — which said the incident took place at a school in the settlement of Gorki-2. Russia’s Investigative Committee later confirmed the information.

According to investigators, one student died in the attack. Police in the Moscow region said the victim was a 10-year-old child who had suffered stab wounds; Telegram channels reported that he was a fourth-grader.

The attacker has been apprehended. Telegram channels identified him as Timofey K., a 15-year-old ninth-grade student at the same school. Baza reported that after the attack he took a selfie with the body of the child he had killed.

The channels also circulated details about what he was wearing: a T-shirt that read “No Lives Matter” and a helmet bearing a quote attributed to Dylann Roof, the American white supremacist who murdered nine Black parishioners in a Charleston church in 2015. The quote read, “Well I had to do it because somebody had to do something.” As Ostorozhno, Novosti noted, Roof’s original statement continues: “Because, you know, Black people are killing white people every day on the street.”

The teenager recorded the attack on video. The footage shows him approaching a group of students and their teacher and asking them about their ethnicity. As he spoke, a security guard approached from behind. The teenager sprayed him with pepper spray and then ran toward the fleeing students with a knife. He caught one student on a staircase and stabbed him in the neck. Mash reported that he had posted these videos to his personal Telegram channel.

Russia’s Investigative Committee has opened a criminal case on charges of murder and attempted murder.