Fourth graders at a school in central Russia have described their horror after two masked teenagers armed with knives stormed into their classroom and stabbed the teacher before attacking students.
“It was the third class. We had arts and crafts, when suddenly two big guys came in,” said one fourth grader at school number 127, recalling the events for Komsomolskaya Pravda daily.
“They were wearing black trousers and sweatshirts. They had their mouths covered with dark masks and they wore sunglasses. Each of them had a knife,” the boy said.
The weapons were not just average kitchen knives, but “looked professional, made for hunting,” he explained.
When one of the attackers saw the teacher reaching for a phone, he ran up and grabbed her, the student recalled. In the meantime, another guy rushed at the children and started seizing them indiscriminately.
“I ran out to the street, there were sweepers. I told them about what happened and ran to the hospital with other kids. Other classmates ran to the shopping mall to shelter and call for help.”
Stricken with panic and fear, many of the primary school children, aged between nine and ten, could not escape the classroom right away, as one of the assailants was blocking the doorway. Another witness recalled the harrowing moment when he and his classmates started to scream for help after their teacher was stabbed.
“A high school student stood at the door and didn’t let us out, when we tried to sneak out. When we came up to him, he put out the knife,” the boy told Life.
The second teenager then began to target the children. “When he hit me with the knife, I moved to the window and when another came up to me, he showed with the gestures that he wouldn’t beat me, because I raised my hands.”
Eventually the children managed to escape the classroom. “They [the attackers] did everything without a word and didn’t call each other by their names,” the boy said.
Local authorities said they are currently following a line of inquiry that the teenagers initially had some kind of a conflict with each other that escalated. The teacher and fourth graders apparently tried to separate the two when the brawl between a high school student and former student spilled into their classroom.
However, Inessa Titova, the mother of one girl who was in the classroom at the moment of the attack, told RT there was “no fight” between the students.
“Those two guys wearing black masks entered the classroom, and without further ado, unsheathed the knives and cut the teacher’s throat, as my daughter says,” she said.
“Everyone worries about their class teacher and two boys who were transferred to an emergency room after the surgeries,” the mother said. “Parents are shocked and panicked. We don’t know how to be now and how to live further.”
The attack left 15 people injured. The teacher and two teens remain in a critical condition.
“The children are very scared. They don’t want to go to school or talk about what happened, trying to change the subject,” Inessa said.