Shocked Slovaks search for answers

BRATISLAVA - Conflicts with his Roma neighbours were a likely motive behind a shooting rampage in which a gunman killed seven people in Bratislava before turning the gun on himself, police said yesterday.

Lubomir Harman, 48, whose victims included his five Roma neighbours, their relative and a woman standing on a balcony, was shot by a police bullet to the chest before he killed himself, the police added, a day after the bloodbath.
“We don’t yet know the motive, but most likely it spread from ongoing conflicts in the neighbourhood,” Interior Minister Daniel Lipsic told reporters, suggesting it was unlikely that race was a factor.
An autopsy showed that Harman, who was unemployed since 2008 and had a clean criminal record, was hit on the left side of his chest by a lethal shot fired from a police weapon, the interior minister said.
“Then he shot himself in his head with his assault rifle to relieve the pain,” Lipsic added.
Police confirmed earlier information that Harman was in legal possession of the assault rifle and several other weapons, but they refuted news reports pointing at his past as a professional soldier or police officer.
The worst mass shooting in Slovakia’s modern history has sent shockwaves through the central European country, which immediately considered tougher gun control regulations. - Nampa-AFP

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