An armed and drunk man killed ten people, including two children, and injured four others after an altercation in a restaurant on Wednesday in southern Montenegro, before killing himself by shooting himself in the head while he was surrounded by the police.
The drama began around 4:30 p.m. GMT in a restaurant in the village of Bajice, near the town of Cetinje. The suspect “after arguing with a customer with whom he had spent a large part of the day, and while he had drunk large quantities of alcohol, returned home, took a weapon and killed four people,” said police chief Lazar Scepanovic.
The 45-year-old killer then went to three other locations where he killed six more people, including a member of his own family, the restaurant owner and his two children, aged 10 and 13. .
“He tried to kill four other people whose lives are no longer in danger,” Mr. Scepanovic said during a press briefing.
After several hours of tracking by the police and the army, the shooter was located and surrounded. When officers asked him “to put down his gun, he shot himself in the head,” Mr. Scepanovic said. “We tried to transport him to a hospital, but he succumbed to his injuries,” he said.
In a speech in the evening, Prime Minister Milojko Spajic announced a three-day national mourning, from Thursday to Saturday inclusive.
Referring to “a fight in a restaurant, during which weapons were drawn, and which degenerated”, Mr. Spajic also announced new restrictions to come on the possession of firearms.
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– Crimes —
“This tragedy raises the question of who can have weapons in Montenegro,” he added.
On site, near the traditional restaurant in which the tragedy took place, the police prevented anyone from approaching in the evening. Dozens of men, police vehicles and at least one ambulance were visible behind the barriers, noted an AFP journalist.
The police assured in a statement that this shooting was “not the result of a confrontation between groups belonging to organized crime”.
Organized crime and corruption have long plagued Montenegro, and the town of Cetinje has been particularly hard hit in recent months.
In June, two people died and three were injured in an explosion there — members of a criminal group, according to police. Among the injured were two other suspected gang members, as well as a female bystander.
After this explosion, the government promised to attack organized crime. But at the end of September, another member of a mafia clan was killed, again in Cetinje, the former royal capital nestled in the hollow of a valley. He was shot and killed by sniper fire while sitting in his backyard.
According to the Small Arms Survey (SAS), a Swiss research program, around 245,000 firearms are in circulation in Montenegro — for a population of 630,000.
“Our thoughts this evening are with the families who have lost loved ones and with the residents of Cetinje. All of Montenegro feels and shares your pain. We pray for the recovery of all the injured,” the country’s president, Jakov Milatovic, wrote on X.
