This afternoon a university in beautiful, magical Prague descended into unfathomable hell on earth.

Prayers for beautiful Prague and its people. This one hurts bad. pic.twitter.com/Rxjae4yRXy

— Learn Latin (@latinedisce) December 21, 2023

A deranged lunatic – a domestic terrorist by any measure – murdered his father, brought the rifle to the university he attended – Charles University – and laid siege to fellow students and people on the streets.

We had an elementary school shooting in Serbia in May, that has taken 10 innocent children’s lives. I used to think something like that is inconceivable, but I now realize the world has gone completely mad and we should be prepared for anything. Tragic and sad. No other words. 💔

— 🔱 𝔅𝔢𝔢𝔩𝔷𝔢𝔟𝔲𝔟 🔱 (@eeevunkump) December 21, 2023

Terrified students cowered on ledges behind balcony parapets…

Students hiding during a shooting at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, earlier today. pic.twitter.com/qN0Ns46OCM

— Morbid Knowledge (@Morbidful) December 21, 2023

…or leapt from them to the balconies below.

NEW – Footage show students jumping off the window during university shooting in Prague. Shooter identified as David Kozak

pic.twitter.com/uFvs46dsNi

— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) December 21, 2023

Others barricaded themselves in classrooms, hoping to survive the gunman’s assault, and then waited for an evacuation by police or an “all clear.”

Currently stuck inside my classroom in Prague. Shooter is dead, but we are waiting to be evacuated. Praying to make it out alive.

Locked the door before the shooter tried to open it. Fucking hell. pic.twitter.com/wYyhOe5U6p

— Jakob Weizman (@jakobweizman) December 21, 2023

When he was finally “eliminated,” as Czech police phrased it, 14 precious lives had been snuffed out, the gunman had killed himself, and, at last word, 24 people were wounded.

Czech students were left clinging to the side of their university building on Thursday as their classmate massacred at least 14 people during Europe’s worst mass shooting since the 2015 terror attacks in Paris.

The gunman, who was studying Polish history in Prague’s Charles University, murdered his father before shooting his classmates in a rampage that injured another 25 people and only ended when he was “eliminated”.

Images showed the man, named by local media as David Kozak, taking aim with a black rifle on the campus, which is located near the tourist hotspot of the Czech capital’s Old Town.

Police said they suspected 24-year-old Kozak shot himself after exchanging fire with officers on the walkway of the building, possibly after being wounded. An autopsy is yet to be performed, but officers said the “devastating injuries” suggested suicide.

He was throwing all the classic signals of derangement – maniacal social media posts about killings, death, even to the point of claiming to be inspired by other mass murderers. One in particular who, in his estimation, “…didn’t kill enough.”

…“I was very inspired by Alina … very much,” said a message posted on Dec. 10, three days after a 14-year-old girl, Alina Afanaskina, opened fire on her classmates, killing two of them, with a pump shotgun in Bryansk. But, the message continued: “She certainly did not kill enough. I will try to fix that.”

A murderous whack-job with a platform to indulge his twisted fantasies.

Czech police were looking into killings the previous week to see if they were connected to the same unhinged individual.

…Czech media reported that Kozak authored social media posts in which he indulged in fantasies of suicide and mass murders in the days before the attacks.

Police said the gunman was inspired by “a terrible event abroad”. In one post, he cited a 14-year-old Russian school shooter who killed one classmate and wounded five others as an inspiration.

Vit Rakusan, the Czech Republic’s interior minister, said police were investigating whether the gunman was responsible for the killing of two people, a man and his two-month-old daughter, in a forest near Prague last week.

What kind of demented animal kills a two-month-old?

In a somber, heartbroken, but surprisingly pragmatic moment at a press conference in the sad aftermath, Prague Mayor Bohuslav Svoboda reflected on the atrocity this evil had visited on his city and his people. How sad he was the troubles plaguing the “modern” world had at last made their way to Prague.

But that was where he stopped saying what is usually heard in the immediate aftermath of such ghastly tragedies.

…”The thing is, of course, a tragedy, it is a tragedy that occurs in the modern world. We know very well that for a number of years we have been hearing from the United States that there has been an excess of some shooter shooting in a school or on the street or somewhere,” Svoboda said in a press briefing.

“We have always thought that this is a matter that does not concern Europe and us, that this is a matter that is also a given in the United States due to the fact that everyone there is armed, etc.”

“Now, unfortunately, it turns out that our world is also changing and we have the problem of the individual shooter whose reasons for what he does are not entirely clear.

And the worst thing about it is that these are things that cannot be solved preventively,” he emphasized.

THESE THINGS CANNOT BE SOLVED PREEMPTIVELY

Wow.

It’s a plain spoken acknowledgment that we should, as the tweet at the top says, “be prepared for anything,” but you cannot stop everything. Or everyone.

The best you can do is defend yourself at the time.

Our deepest condolences and most fervent prayers to Prague, especially that all the wounded recover completely.