‘Shoot here!’: Reporter screams at Prague gunman to help people flee

PRAGUE - “Hey, you f****r, here I am, shoot here!” screamed a Czech reporter trying to distract

a gunman who killed 14 people at a university building in Prague

on Dec 21, helping people to flee the country’s worst mass shooting.

Mr Jiri Forman, a reporter for a small security-focused news outfit who said he had experience in war zones, evaded fire from the gunman who was perched on a balcony on the top floor of Charles University’s Faculty of Art.

While ducking behind a corner in a square below, he kept feeding information to police outside and urged them to fire back, while filming continuously on his phone.

Asked by an officer what was he doing, Mr Forman is heard in the footage shouting: “So that he doesn’t shoot at the people! What do you think I’m doing, man? There are people there!”

His actions have won him plaudits in Czech media, but Mr Forman played down suggestions he was a hero.

“Where I stood, it was absolutely safe. Nobody was there, and I knew I could duck behind an obstacle,” he told Reuters on Dec 22.

“And if he shot in my direction, he wouldn’t have the people fleeing, they would have a chance to reach cover. I screamed at him and he started shooting in my direction.”

Police in the square returned fire at the attacker, a 24-year-old student at the faculty with a gun licence.

He eventually dropped his rifle with sights, and the police said this allowed officers inside the building to get closer, prompting the attacker to shoot himself.

“The policeman, I believe, shot three times at the attacker. I think this threw him off balance. Then he also heard that police were getting close from inside, so he shot himself,” Mr Forman said.

The police said they had been hunting the assailant since 12.26pm on Dec 21, when his friend alerted them he had sent a suicidal text message. While they tried to intercept him at a lecture he was due to attend at another location, he went instead to a different building.

The police said it took 21 minutes from the first information on the shooting at the building to confirmation the attacker was dead at 3.20pm.

Apart from victims at the university, the police said the attacker also killed his father earlier on Dec 21, and ballistic analysis linked him to the murder of a man and his two-month-old daughter last week.

“I did things I believed were right, and unfortunately, the sad heroes are the relatives who lost their closest ones at this Christmastime, and policemen and rescue services,” Mr Forman said. REUTERS