The shooter, 38, first killed his estranged wife and her friend around 1:40 a.m. local time Saturday before spraying bullets into the crowded Macchiato café during a festival in the village of Zitiste, located about 30 miles north of Belgrade.
“He just pulled out a gun and started shooting, first into the air,” said one of the witnesses, Svetozar Manojlovic. “It sounded like firecrackers at first,” he said. “Then the guy next to me fell down and others started falling down. It was total chaos.”
Witnesses said the shooter, who has only been identified as Z.S., saw his wife out partying with a group of friends earlier in the night and went home to retrieve his gun. State news agency Tanjug reported that he was wielding a Kalashnikov rifle, which he obtained illegally.
The café's owner, Ljubomir Milinovic, said the crowd of people were enjoying a hot summer night out before the bloodshed and chaos.
Quick-acting witnesses managed to wrest the gunman's firearm from his hands while he tried to flee the scene. Police in the vicinity swiftly caught up with and took him into custody, according to Serbia's Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic.
The wounded victims were taken to hospitals in nearby Zrenjanin and Novi Sad. Doctors in Zrenjanin said seven people underwent operation and were in serious condition.
“Jealousy could be a motive,” Stefanovic said. “He was a quiet man; he had no criminal record.”
He urged Serbians to hand over illegal weapons, many of which were acquired following the wars in the Balkans in the 1990s.
“This was completely unexpected,” Stefanovic said, speaking in front of the café. “There were no signs at all, people tell us that he was completely calm and normal,” he said.
Last year, a man killed six people with a hunting rifle in northern Serbia, while in 2013 a Balkan war veteran killed 13 people in a shooting spree in a central Serbian village.
The tragedies shocked the nation and sparked a public debate about the amount of weapons left over from the 1990s conflict.
By: Christopher Brennan and Laura Bult (New York Daily News).
Photo: Swiss Info.
Review: Emerging Market Formulations & Research Unit, FLAGSHIP RECORDS.
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