Pekka-Eric Auvinen

The Jokela school shooting occurred on 7 November 2007, at Jokela High School in Jokela, a town in the municipality of Tuusula, Finland. The gunman, 18-year-old student Pekka-Eric Auvinen, entered the school on that morning armed with a semi-automatic pistol. He killed eight people and wounded one person in the toe before shooting himself in the head; twelve others were also injured by flying shattered glass or sprained ankles. Auvinen died later that evening in a Helsinki hospital.

This was the second school shooting in the history of Finland. The previous incident occurred in 1989 at the Raumanmeri school in Rauma, when a 14-year-old fatally shot two fellow students. Less than one year after the Jokela school massacre, the Kauhajoki school shooting occurred in Kauhajoki, where a gunman shot and killed ten people before killing himself.

At approximately 11:40 (09:40 UTC), Auvinen entered the school's ground-floor main hallway at Jokela High School, having missed his first lesson. He encountered a student in the corridor and killed him at 11:42, then moved to the lavatories. Soon after, other students found the victim's body, but assumed he was rendered unconscious from a bump to his head. Other students heard the sound of gunshots, but did not recognise them. At the lavatories, Auvinen fatally shot two more students, prompting the school nurse to call emergency services. After shooting and killing a student outside the lavatory, Auvinen ran after the nurse, caught up to her, and fatally shot her and another student at 11:46.

At 11:47, head teacher Helena Kalmi was alerted to the shooting by the deputy head teacher. She immediately ordered all students and teachers via PA system to barricade themselves inside their classrooms. After this, Auvinen began shouting and firing randomly, discharging his gun a total of 53 times in the corridors. At one point, he encountered the mother of a student as she was entering the school, but spared her. He then attempted to enter a classroom, shooting three times through the barricaded door and hitting a student in the toe. Auvinen then traveled to the school's second floor and found two students sitting on a bench in the corridor. While one student escaped him uninjured, the other was shot and killed.