It was a gloomy, rainy day. After the sunny May Day holidays, the fog descended on Belgrade. And there was nothing to suggest that the day would pass differently than usual in a city of two million people. Until the emergency vehicles started flying through the center of Belgrade.
Three years ago, on that third of May at 8:41 in the morning, thirteen-year-old KK fired the first shot. In the shooting that day in elementary school "Vladislav Ribnikar" eight students and a security guard were killed, while one seriously wounded girl died twelve days later. The perpetrator, also a child, committed the crime with two of his father's guns. He made Molotov cocktails himself.
The hours after the shooting were marked by the agony of distraught and uninformed parents, the shameless coverage of tabloids eager for exclusives, and the rush of doctors and emergency workers. After several hours of silence from the authorities, the then Minister of Education Branko Ružić, Minister of Health Danica Grujičić and the Chief of Belgrade Police addressed the public at an extraordinary conference. Veselin Milić.
The moment of the arrest of KK (Photo: Tanjug)The moment of the arrest of KK (Photo: Tanjug)
In school
Milić was the first to present the official information. He stated that around 8:40 a.m. that day, the assistant director of Vladislav Ribnikar Elementary School called the police and reported that a child had entered the school with a firearm and was shooting randomly. According to him, two minutes after the first call, the MUP was called by someone who introduced himself as KK and said that he had shot several people.
"The weapon used to commit the crime was found, as well as four Molotov cocktails." He had a list of children he planned to liquidate. A motive has not yet been established. Nor did he tell us. He took the pistols from his father's apartment. He left them in the bag he had prepared and took four Molotov cocktails with him," said Milić.
He then went on to describe the entire event, giving details that were not allowed to be made public.
For example, the list of children who were "priority targets" for KK. Milić showed the list at the press conference, together with a sketch of the exits and entrances to the school and the layout of the classrooms and the departments that had classes in them. Soon both papers ended up in the media and on social networks. The surviving children from the liquidation list and their parents could also see them.
Months later, the minutes of the inspection carried out by the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Protection of Personal Data determined that at the conference on May 3, Veselin Milić did not violate the law by showing the list of "priority targets" in front of the cameras. The commissioner pointed out that the culprits are the media that reported it.
Photo: Tanjug / Jadranka Ilić Veselin Milić at the press conference on May 3 (Photo: Tanjug/Jadranka Ilić)
In front of the school
Shortly after the first report of the shooting, a crowd began to form in front of the school. Terrified parents, journalists, emergency services and the police, who did not take long to close the street. Heartbreaking scenes of parents running to hug their children when they see them leaving school alive and well. Even more poignant scenes of parents who could not find their children. And who waited for hours for any information.
Ivana Stefanović, a doctor from the Belgrade Emergency Service, said later in CINS' Clues Podcast that it was thought for a long time how to inform the parents that their children were killed.
"You know, when you see a parent, you can't just share that kind of information." And maybe some parents went to one hospital, to another to look for their child, but I was there and I can tell you that from the first second, the best solution was really sought. You cannot bring them into the school. It's still an investigation, they have nowhere to go and then we came to the decision that anyone whose child doesn't answer should report to the police station and our teams were there again," said Stefanović.
A few hours after the shooting, information arrived from SUP Vračar that parents who still cannot get in touch with their children should come to the police station. There, on the second floor, in the presence of the police and an ambulance team ready to come if someone fell ill, the parents were informed one by one that their children did not survive. Andrija, Ana, Bojana, Sofia, Adriana, Katarina, Mara and Emma were killed.
That's when security worker Dragan Vlahović, a favorite among children, also died. The badly wounded Angelina Aćimović died twelve days later.
Some of the parents of the injured children said they understood why the police waited to tell them the tragic news.
"Well, now, from this perspective, I understand, it's even justified that... The way they communicated to us. Well, they had, I don't know, an emergency room in the office next door, if someone got sick, they didn't make a scene in front of everyone... I mean, 'yes' from that side, but... I can't say, better than if they told us there". said Ivan Božović, the father of the murdered Ana.
Closed street where "Vladislav Ribnikar" Elementary School is located (Photo: AP/Darko Vojinović)Closed street where "Vladislav Ribnikar" Elementary School is located (Photo: AP/Darko Vojinović)
The days that followed and the return of the children to the benches
That evening, a large number of citizens gathered on Cvetni trg to mourn together the murdered children and the school guard. In the days that followed, it seemed as if all of Belgrade gathered in front of Ribnikar to light a candle, leave a message for the victims and write in the book of mourning. But, despite the crowd that did not decrease, there were no quieter streets in Belgrade in those days than Njegoševa, Kralj Milutin and Svetozar Marković.
"Vladislav Rybnikar" model elementary school did not work for the next week. On May 10, following the recommendation of the Ministry of Education and engaged psychologists to "return to the routine", the children found themselves back in the classrooms of the Witchcraft School.
The students did not have classes, but had discussions with class teachers and psychologists. On the first day, they stayed at school for 90 minutes, the next day an hour longer. While some parents welcomed the decision to return to the classrooms, others believed that it was too early for such a thing and that the children were retraumatized by it.
After several months of disagreements about what should be done with "Vladislav Ribnikar" Elementary School, in March of this year the decision of the Government of Serbia on the formation of a Working Group for the establishment of a memorial center in memory of the victims was announced mass murder in this school. It is not yet known what the memorial center will look like and which part of the school it will cover.
Public lesson in front of "Vladislav Ribnikar" school (Photo: FoNet/Marko Dragoslavić)Public class in front of the "Vladislav Ribnikar" school (Photo: FoNet/Marko Dragoslavić)
New trial
The first-instance proceedings ended with the passing of a verdict in March 2026, by which the parents of the minor K. K., but a new trial is underway before the High Court in Belgrade, after the Court of Appeal in Belgrade annulled the first-instance verdict.
Father Vladimir Kecmanović was sentenced in the first instance to a single prison sentence of 14 and a half years. The indictment charged him with serious crimes against general security, more specifically, that he trained his then 13-year-old son to handle firearms and that he did not hold the weapon in the prescribed manner.
Miljana Kecmanović's mother was sentenced to three years in prison. During the proceedings, the indictment against her was expanded to the criminal offense of neglect and abuse of a minor, for which the father was also accused.
Due to the fact that he was less than 14 years old at the time of the crime, KK is not criminally responsible according to the law and no indictment could be filed against him. During the parents' trial, he appeared as a witness.
The trial began in January 2024 before the High Court in Belgrade. In addition to the parents, the indictment included responsible persons from the shooting range where the boy practiced shooting, for giving a false statement.
Celebrating the anniversary
Until the end of the day, the Ministry of Internal Affairs did not announce the incident that happened while people were lighting candles in front of the "Ribnikar" Elementary School, although the police immediately entered the building from which, allegedly, the firecracker was thrown from the cannon.
The SRCE party, whose response to this incident is one of many, calls it "shameful and monstrous that exposed the harsh truth about the society we live in and became a mirror of the state's complete moral and security breakdown under the Vučić regime."
The Government of Serbia formed a Working Group in March 2024, and then a Multidisciplinary Team that was supposed to conduct extensive consultations and prepare recommendations and proposals for concrete measures for the establishment of the Memorial Center, its program work, formulating the conditions of the international design architectural competition and choosing the best solution for that center, but nothing happened.
"Sometimes it's better to maybe slow down a bit in order to come to the right solution, than to create something overnight that may not be the most ideal," said working group member Aleksandra Ivanković for N1.
The citizens of Belgrade pay their respects to those killed in front of "Ribnikar" until 8:00 p.m. by writing in the book of memories, laying flowers and lighting candles.
In the area of Mali Tašmajdan, art workshops were organized, and in Veliki Tašmajdan, in the circle around the monument to Desanka Maksimović, there was a "Space of Remembrance" - programmatic and artistic content dedicated to the murdered students and the school guard.
The students in the blockade of the Faculty of Law of the University of Belgrade announced that after 16 minutes of silence in front of that faculty, they would walk to the Elementary School "Vladislav Ribnikar" in order to pay their respects to the victims.
They said that on May 3, a horror happened that must never be repeated or forgotten.
"The third of May is the day when we as a society became speechless. The students in the blockade deeply sympathize with the families who suffered an irreparable loss at the 'Vladislav Ribnikar' Experimental Elementary School, as well as with everyone who still bears the scars of that morning. We remember the shock and continuous media coverage that overwhelmed us all then, but today the noise must be silenced in front of the sadness," the students said on social networks.
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