A police van is seen in Hyvinkaa, Finland, on May 26, 2012/AFP
HELSINKI, Oct 10 – A 16 year old boy stabbed and seriously injured four people at a vocational training college in western Finland Thursday, police said, the latest of several school attacks by young men over the last six years.
The teenager reportedly stabbed two of the victims in the canteen at the school in the city of Oulu before going outside and turning on two others.
Three of the victims were women under the age of 20 and the fourth was the school’s caretaker, a 21 year old man. All have serious injuries, police said in a statement.
Police arrested the teenager, whose identity has not been released, after the attack and confirmed he was a student at the college.
Calling the attack “extremely sad”, Finland’s Education Minister Krista Kiuru said in a statement that violence has “no place in schools”.
The stabbing was “incomprehensible”, she said.
Finland has seen several deadly shootings in schools over the last few years, all by young men.
In November 2007, eight people were killed in a high school north of the capital Helsinki by an 18 year old who later killed himself.
Less than a year later, a 22 year old shot and killed 10 students in a classroom at a cooking school in the western city of Kauhajoki.
And in May last year, two people died and seven more were injured after a shooting near Helsinki. The attacker was sentenced to life in prison in February.
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