Prague, Czech Republic – The deranged killer behind a deadly mass shooting that erupted inside Charles University in the city’s Old Town district has now been identified. An independent Justice Report investigation has revealed that the now-deceased shooter used the social media platform Telegram to pen a manifesto days before he launched the attack.

According to reports, the gunman has since been identified by authorities as 24-year-old David Kozák, a student at the school who used an automatic weapon to kill at least 15 people and wound 24 others. The attack erupted around 3 pm Thursday afternoon and resulted in Kozák taking his own life. The incident would later be described as the country’s “worst-ever mass shooting.”

“I saw a young person on the gallery who had some weapon in his hand, like and automatic weapon, and shooting toward the Manes Bridge,” said Petr Nedoma, director of the Rudolfinum Gallery, to Czech TV. “Repeatedly, with some interruptions, then I saw as he shot, put hands up and threw the weapon down on the street, it lay there on the pedestrian crossing.”

It is believed Kozák began opening fire on the fourth floor of the Faculty of Philosophy building. Videos of the attack uploaded to social media showed attempts by students to escape the gunfire, with some exiting windows and holding onto ledges for dear life. One victim, an unidentified female, would eventually slip and fall to her death. When law enforcement arrived on the scene, Kozak reportedly shot himself.

In a news conference, the Czech Republic’s interior minister said Police are “working on a theory” that Kozák may have been responsible for the killings of two people last week in the Klanovicky forest near Prague. A large cache of weapons was found inside the university, according to reports, and the kill count could have been higher had the Police not responded as quickly as they did.

In the aftermath of the attack, a Telegram page allegedly belonging to Kozák quickly surfaced and offered a unique view into the disturbed and suicidal mind of a deceased gunman. According to the now-deleted page—titled @Kozak_David—the killer of fifteen expressed his desire to commit “mass murders,” and described a 14-year-old Russian school shooter in Bryansk as an inspiration that came to him “from heaven.”

“Let me introduce myself, my name is David,” said Kozák in a post. “I want to do school shooting and possibly suicide, Alina Afanaskina helped me too much…This channel is a diary where I will talk about my life before the shooting.”

Kozák had posted updates to his Telegram channel for several days, with the latest entry appearing on December 19th, hours before the attack unfolded. In them, he would comment on his “crap life” and how he hated the world. and wanted to “leave as much pain as possible.”

“I drink tea and want to shoot myself,” he said in a post. “I have a ringing in my ears…like some kind of f—–g fireflies. I wanted to rip my ears out.”

“I always wanted to kill, I thought I would become a maniac in the future…Then when Ilnaz did the shooting, I realized that it was much more profitable to do mass murders rather than serial ones. I sat.. Waited.. Dreamed.. Wanted.. but Alina became the last point. It was as if she had come to my aid from heaven just in time,” he continued.

According to the BBC, Kozák was a good student, studying at Charles University’s Institute of World History in Palach Square. A student with an identical name once received an award for an outstanding bachelor’s thesis from Prague’s Polish Institute. The thesis was focused on the historical events of 1846 in Krakow and other regions that currently belong to Poland.

Law enforcement authorities revealed that Kozák was scheduled to attend a lecture this afternoon in a different university building on Celetna Street, a mere short walk from the arts faculty and close to Prague’s Old Town Square. Prior to the shooting incident, police officers had been searching for him at that location.

Other than the obvious mental health issues made apparent by the Telegram diary, It is currently unknown if there were any other motivations behind Kozák’s University shooting. The Justice Report will continue to provide updates as they become available.

“Let me introduce myself, my name is David. I want to do school shooting and possibly suicide.”

24-year-old David Kozák, Telegram

According to Reuters, gun crime is considered rare in the Czech Republic, despite being a nation of exceptionally high rates of gun ownership among its citizens. The “right to acquire, keep, and bear firearms” is recognized and upheld in Czech firearms legislation. The lack of murders compared to other less racially homogenous Western nations may correlate with its dense White population. In 2019, a 42-year-old gunman shot and killed six inside a hospital in Ostrava before fleeing and committing suicide.

Kozák’s inspiration, Alina Afanaskina, was a schoolgirl in the Russian city of Bryansk who killed two fellow students on December 7th with a shotgun that she had smuggled into a school gymnasium. In a separate incident, a disgruntled Ukrainian MP killed one and injured dozens in a village grenade attack that was caught on video. Kozák also mentioned 19-year-old Ilnaz Galyaviev, who shot and bombed targets inside a school during a May 2021 terrorist attack in Kazan. Ilnaz would eventually plead guilty to killing nine people, including 8th-grade students and two teachers, and injuring 23 others.

Shooters and other criminals often leave a concerning digital footprint, which can later be used to suss out potential motives or grant insight into their politics. In November, an independent Justice Report investigation found that a man accused of shooting three Palestinian men in the United States was a libertarian anarchist and used Twitter to espouse his radical views. In 2021, a bombshell investigation by National-Justice revealed that now-convicted Waukesha Christmas Parade killer Darrell Brooks was a self-described black terrorist who preached violence against White people.

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