The student who carried out the Czech Republic’s worst-ever mass shooting at a university in Prague Thursday, killing at least 14 people, has now been linked to the earlier slayings of a father and his newborn baby — as the gunman’s disturbing online posts saying he “wanted to kill” have emerged.
The suspect in the deadly rampage at Charles University — who has not been formally identified by the Prague police but was named in local media as 24-year-old David Kozák — has been tied to a double homicide that occurred on Dec. 15 in the nearby town of Klanovice.
A man and his 2-month-old daughter were found mercilessly shot to death in the woods.
Some 250 officers had spent the past week scouring the area surrounding the crime scene, but no clues were found.
However, after a search of Kozak’s house, authorities said they found evidence linking him to the shocking double murder.
“We are working very seriously with the version, which is very real at the moment, that today’s attacker is also responsible for the two victims killed last Friday at Klanovice forest,” police chief Martin Vondrasek said on Thursday evening, without elaborating on the evidence.
“I am convinced at this point that these were completely randomly selected victims by a person with no criminal record whatsoever.”
Kozák was also believed to have killed his own father in his hometown of Hostoun, before going on the bloody rampage at his university.
Meanwhile, a Telegram channel associated with Kozák has been found to contain a series of chilling Russian-language writings, in which the philosophy student talked about wanting to unleash carnage at a school.
“I want to do school shooting and possibly suicide,” Kozák wrote in one entry in what he called his online “diary,” later adding: “I always wanted to kill. I thought I would become a maniac in the future.”
The 24-year-old was apparently inspired by two recent school shootings in Russia and wrote admiringly of their perpetrators.
“When Ilznaz did the shooting, I realized it was much more profitable to do mass murders than serial ones,” Kozák mused, apparently referring to 19-year-olf Ilznaz Galyaviev, who killed nine people at his former school in Kazan, Russia, in 2021.
Kozák also heaped praise on 14-year-old Alina Afanaskina, who killed a schoolmate and injured five others, before turning her father’s shotgun on herself, in Bryansk, Russia, earlier this month.
“It was as if she had come to my aid from heaven just in time,” he wrote of Afanaskina.
A post dated Dec. 17 also declared: “I hate the world and want to leave as much pain as possible.”
In his final message, from Dec. 19, Kozák complained of having “a ringing in my ears … like some kind of f–king fireflies. I wanted to rip my ears out.”
Kozák kept his Telegram channel private until just before Thursday’s attack, when he made it public. It has since been taken down.
Czech Interior Minister Vit Rakusan said Thursday that investigators didn’t believe the gunman was linked to any extremist ideology or terrorist groups.
Around 3 p.m. local time, Kozák, wearing all black and carrying a large rifle, went up to the fourth floor of Charles University’s Faculty of Arts and opened fire, sending panicked students and faculty running for their lives.
Harrowing images showed people clinging to the ledge of a building to avoid getting killed during the worst mass shooting in Czech history.
As police officers closed in on the heavily armed gunman, he killed himself, said Petr Matejcek, the director of the police regional headquarters in Prague.
Police said the shooter had legally owned several guns and did not have a prior criminal history.
The Czech government declared Saturday a national day of mourning to honor the victims, who have all been identified.