DENVER — Denver Nuggets superstar Nikola Jokic, who is a native of Serbia, weighed in on the school shooting in Belgrade that left eight children and a school guard dead on Wednesday and hospitalized several others.
“It’s something I don’t remember happening in Serbia,” he said.
A 13-year-old student opened fire in a hallway and a classroom, targeting students in what Serbian police called a thoroughly planned attack.
On Thursday, the southeastern European country saw its second mass killing in as many days. Serbian state television said at least eight people were killed and 10 more wounded in a drive-by shooting in a town close to Belgrade.
Even though Serbia is known to be fraught with guns left over from the Balkan wars of decades past, this sort of violence is rare there. No mass shootings had been reported at Serbian schools in recent years, according to the Associated Press.
Jokic, who grew up in the northern Serbian town of Sombor, about 90 miles northwest of Belgrade, made his comments Thursday before news spread of the second mass shooting. He said hearing about Wednesday's school shooting took him by surprise.
“It’s something you don’t want to hear about,” he said. “When it hits [...] a little closer to you – it doesn’t make any sense. In Serbia, it’s never happened before.”
He went on to discuss the importance of mental health in the wake of the attack.
“I would say, ‘We don’t have that [kind of violence in Serbia],' but maybe that’s just a mindset, that’s not true,” he said. “People, kids, we all have problems. We need to take care of everybody.
“If somebody is not good, just ask if [they’re OK]. Ask, and mean it, and maybe it will help.”
The boy accused of opening fire at the school called police to report the crime, according to the Associated Press, telling authorities he was “a psychopath who needs to calm down.”
Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic said the shooter was taken to a psychiatric clinic and that the police also detained the teenager's mother. He didn't elaborate.
He also listed a set of proposed measures to improve gun control: tighten media and internet restrictions for violent content and conduct drug tests in schools.
On Thursday, scores of Serbian students – many wearing black and carrying flowers – paid a silent homage to their slain peers.
The students filled the streets around the school in central Belgrade as they streamed in from all over the city. Thousands of others earlier lined up to lay flowers, light candles and leave toys to commemorate the children and a school guard who were killed.
