A shooting left at least 12 dead in Montenegro on Wednesday January 1. The man suspected of being the perpetrator was 45 years old. Surrounded by the police, he committed suicide after the assault.
The man suspected of having killed at least 12 people in Montenegro committed suicide by shooting himself in the head, local police announced on the night of Wednesday to Thursday January 2.
The drama began around 5:30 p.m. 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,” Lazar Scepanovic said during a press briefing. The latest death toll rose this Thursday, January 2, to 12 deaths.
Surrounded by law enforcement
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,” Lazar 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 this Thursday, January 2 to Saturday, January 4 inclusive.
Referring to “a fight in a restaurant, during which weapons were drawn, and which degenerated”, Milojko Spajic also announced new restrictions to come on the possession of firearms.
Organized crime trail ruled out
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.
“Our thoughts this evening are with the families who 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 .
