Bratislava, Slovakia: Two dead after shooting in a bar serving the LGBTI community
Yesterday evening, in the center of Bratislava, Slovakia, a gunman fired his weapon at the people in a bar for the LGBTI community on Zámecká Street, killing two customers and injuring a staff member. Police later found the assailant dead, as Slovak Police Presidium spokesperson Michal Slivka has informed the Czech News Agency.
The shooter fled the scene after committing the crimes. “We can assure the public that there is no threat of another attack by the shooter involved in the incident in Bratislava on Zámecká Street. Police found the shooter this morning. He is dead,” the Slovak Police posted to Facebook.
Currently police say that procedural tasks related to the incident are underway, and they are working on the supposition that this was an extremist crime motivated by hate for the LGBTI community. Media in Slovakia have confirmed that assumption and have reported that a man claimed responsibility for the attack on Twitter who, ahead of the shooting, had published a manifesto against Jews and the LGBTI comunity calling for violence to be committed against both groups.
The man’s social media account included photographs in front of the Teplárna bar, where a couple of months ago he posed for a photo in front of this favorite establishment of the LGBTI community. A few hours before his attack, the shooter posted a message to that account reading: “I’ve made up my mind.”
Immediately after the shooting, several posts were published to that same account indicating that its owner was responsible for the murder of the two young people in the bar. The social network has since blocked that account.
Eyewitnesses to the incident heard about 10 gunshots being fired. One eyewitness told the JOJ television station that the shooter had a weapon with a laser sight and was certain of his targets.
Slovak President Zuzana Čaputová has posted to Facebook that according to the available information, the shooting was a hate crime targeting minorities. The president said she believes such hate has long been kept alive by politicians making irresponsible and stupid remarks.
Daniel Lipšic, an elite prosecutor, also called hate the likely motive of the tragedy. “For the time being, the likely motive for this crime seems to be hatred of persons of other races and other sexual orientations,” the prosecutor said.
Lipšic also told journalists that all indications are that the man committed suicide after the murders. Slovak MEP Peter Pollák, who is of Romani origin, posted this response to the news: “I condemn yesterday’s murderous attack.”
“No form of extremism is acceptable,” Pollák posted. Petra Vytejčková, a lawyer with the In IUSTITIA organization in the Czech Republic, has tweeted in response to the incident in Slovakia that “Bias attacks begin with words.”
“First it’s verbal abuse that is tolerated, then there are the calls to gas people, or to shoot them, or to rape them, or expressions of adoration for Hitler. Neither the police nor the courts investigate those verbal incidents, they don’t condemn them, they say ‘nothing much happened’. A lot has happened already, though. The ground has been prepared for hate and for the trivialization of violence,” Vytejčková tweeted.
The incident is not the first such shooting in the Slovak capital. In 2010, a shooter used a machine gun to kill seven people in Bratislava’s Devínska Nová Ves neighborhood on the city outskirts, after which he also committed suicide.
