Mourners place candle lights outside Charles University for victims of the mass shooting in Prague. Photo / AP
Mourners place candle lights outside Charles University for victims of the mass shooting in Prague. Photo / AP
Prague police have apologised for failing to capture a university gunman before he launched his rampage, after it emerged he was suspected of shooting a father and baby in a park only a week earlier.
David Kozak, the 24-year-old gunman, is suspected of shooting dead the 32-year-old man and his 2-month-old daughter in woodland near the Czech capital on December 15.
“I think we were days from uncovering the [Prague university] shooter as the shooter from the forest,” the police said.
Their bodies were found after shots rang out at woodland in Klanovice, 17km east of Prague’s city centre, last Friday in an apparently random attack.
No perpetrator was found despite hundreds of police, dogs and a thermal imaging-equipped helicopter combing the area in the week since.
US Ambassador to the Czech Republic Bijan Sabet places flowers outside Charles University in Prague for victims of the mass shooting. Photo / AP
But after a search of Kozak’s house, Czech police said they found evidence linking him to the double murder.
“We are working very seriously with the version, which is very real at the moment, that today’s attacker is also responsible for the two victims killed last Friday at Klanovice forest,” police chief Martin Vondrasek said.
“I am convinced at this point that these were completely randomly selected victims by a person with no criminal record whatsoever.”
The head of the murder department at Prague police confirmed the university gunman was one of the suspects in the forest shooting, and that they were “days away” from identifying him as such.
“I think we were days from uncovering the shooter as the shooter from the forest. I am extremely sorry for what happened. I am convinced we did our best,” he said.
On Thursday afternoon, the gunman is understood to have killed his own father in their family home in a village near the town of Kladno outside of Prague, a police chief spokesman said. He then went on the shooting rampage at Charles University.
One of the victims of Thursday’s shooting has been named as Lenka Hlavkova, the head of the Institute of Musicology at the university’s Faculty of Arts, the Czech interior ministry said. Hlavkova is believed to leave behind two school-age sons.
No foreigners were killed during the shooting, but three were wounded, the interior ministry said.
The police chief warned that some people might be inspired by the shooting.
“At half past midnight, we received a call saying that someone was inspired by the perpetrator. In the early hours of the morning we were able to secure this caller. I don’t have more details, but we have to watch out,” he said.
A woman mourns victims of the mass shooting at Prague's Charles University. Photo / AP
“Some people might say the police came too late. The reaction time was four minutes; four minutes, from when we received the first call from when the first policeman stepped into the building,” a police official said.
“People might be surprised that we asked the evacuees to raise their hands when walking out of the building, but at the time we weren’t sure if there were any accomplices,” he said.
Ondrej Moravcik, a spokesman for the Czech police, said they began evacuating one of the buildings, and then got information the assailant was in a different building and quickly moved there to start evacuating people.
The authorities said students had barricaded themselves into rooms of the university building, and in some instances, police had to use force to get through and evacuate students.
An investigation deputy has said a witness called the police at 12.26pm, saying her friend sent a suicide text and that police units “immediately reacted”.
Police guarding the area outside a Charles University building in Prague. Photo / AP
“Soon after that, police found a dead man in the town and in the following minutes we found out there is a device in the house that could be a bomb,” he said. They then learned the suspect was heading towards the capital.
Authorities are investigating messages posted on Telegram under the name of David Kozak.
One post shared the day before the shooting said: “This will be my diary as I go toward school shooting.”
Another message said: “I always wanted to kill. I thought I would be a maniac in the future.”
