Thousands of people in Austria's second largest city mourn the deaths of seven students and three teachers at a secondary school, killed by an armed young man who later committed suicide.
A crisis team is deployed in Graz, Austria, following the shooting in a school on 10 June 2025. / Photo: [link]Österreichische RF[/link].
The incident, already described as a “national tragedy”, occurred on the morning of Tuesday 10 June, when a former student entered a secondary school in north-west Graz with two firearms and killed ten people, seven students and three teachers.
Another thirteen people were injured and taken to health centres while specialised police teams evacuated the building.
The 21-year-old attacker committed suicide after being confronted by security forces. His identity has not yet been released, but it is known that he legally owned the weapons and had no criminal record.
Austria’s chancellor, Christian Stocker, told the press that “today is a dark day in our history” as the violence in a school “striked our country right at its heart”.
The national government declared three days of national mourning to respond as a society to a “national tragedy that shocks us deeply”. It is the worst incident in the country's modern history.
Oliver Stozek, general secretary of the Evangelical Alliance Austria, told Evangelical Focus that “such an act leaves you feeling powerless, incomprehensible and helpless. Words fail you”.
“You’ve heard of such acts from abroad, I think nobody here in Austria could have imagined it. So, the whole country is paralyzed and in a state of shock”.
Stozek admits that “we Christians are no different to anyone else, the feelings we have are the same (…) And of course we ask ourselves how we can help”.
“We know that we don't need to be afraid of death, as Jesus says”, he continues, but this belief does not change the tragic reality of “the families of the victims, and even the family of the perpetrator”.
Echoing the lament expressed across Austria, the evangelical representative told Evangelical Focus that Christians can also feel “helpless”. But “our heavenly Father is the source of all comfort and has a future for those affected”.
This understanding of the gospel is what drives Christians in Austria to pray for those most directly affected by the shooting, that they might “have an encounter with the Savior who can also deliver them from this traumatic experience”, Stozek concluded.
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