17 killed, 10 wounded in school shooting in Baku

[bigworld]

Source: Moscow News

The official death toll at the Baku university shootout has reached 17; ten people have been wounded, ANS Press reports.

Among the dead is the gunman himself, identified as a 29-year-old ethnic Azerbaijani with Georgian citizenship, Fyarda Asad Oglu Gadirov.

Gadirov opened fire in the Azerbaijan Oil Academy, the country’s most prestigious school, early on Thursday.

Immediately after the beginning of classes, he entered the building and used his Makarov pistol to shoot first the security guards and the cleaning woman, and then everyone he met in the building as he went up the stairs to the top floor. Reports say during the shooting he aimed for people’s head.

When Gadirov realized he was about to be seized, he shot himself through the head.

On his corpse the police found an ammunition bag with 71 bullets.

Azerbaijan’s President Ilkham Aliyev has expressed his condolences to the families and friends of the tragedy’s victims and promised to direct the investigation.

Read more: http://mosnews.com/world/2009/04/30/bakuupdate/

[russian33]

1. very sad, i was born in Baku

and still have some family and friends there...so far, no one that i know...a horrible tragedy..there were students from other countries that were killed too, i think Sudan?

[izquierdista]

2. Just another cost of freedom

That shouldn't interfere with the Second Amendment right to bear arms....oh wait.....never mind.

[AlphaCentauri]

3. Doom live

copy cats

[johnbyrnes]

4. What have we learned from school shootings?

Research has determined that from the Moment of Commitment (the point when a student pulls their weapon) to the Moment of Completion (when the last round is fired) is only 5 seconds. If it is the intent of a school district to react to this violence, they will do so over the wounded and/or slain bodies of students, teachers and administrators.

Educational institutions clearly want safe and secure schools. Administrators are perennially queried by parents about the safety of their schools. The commonplace answers, intended to reassure anxious parents, focus on the school resource officers and emergency procedures. While useful, these less than adequate efforts do not begin to provide a definitive answer to preventing school violence, nor do they make a school safe and secure.

Traditionally school districts have relied upon the mental health community or local police to keep schools safe, yet one of the key shortcomings has been the lack of a system that involves teachers, administrators, parents and students in the identification and communication process. Recently, colleges, universities and community colleges are forming Behavioral Intervention Teams with representatives from all these constituencies. Higher Education has changed their safety/security policies, procedures, or surveillance systems, yet K-12 have yet to incorporate Behavioral Intervention Teams. K-12 schools continue spending excessive amounts of money to put in place many of the physical security options. Sadly, they are reactionary only and do little to prevent aggression because they are designed exclusively to react to existing conflict, threat and violence. These schools reflect a national blindspot, which prefers hardening targets through enhanced security versus preventing violence with efforts directed at aggressors. Security gets all the focus and money, but this only makes us feel safe, rather than to actually make us safer.

Some law enforcement agencies use profiling as a means to identify an aggressor. According to the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Education’s report on Targeted Violence in Schools, there is a significant difference between “profiling” and identifying and measuring emerging aggression; “The use of profiles is not effective either for identifying students who may pose a risk for targeted violence at school or – once a student has been identified – for assessing the risk that a particular student may pose for school-based targeted violence.” It continues; “An inquiry should focus instead on a student’s behaviors and communications to determine if the student appears to be planning or preparing for an attack.” We can and must assess objective, culturally neutral, identifiable criteria of emerging aggression.

For a comprehensive look at the problem and its solution, http://www.aggressionmanagement.com/White_Paper_K-12/
Continue the dialogue: http://aggressionmanagement.blogspot.com/