| “ | I am ready to die for a cause I know is right, just and true... even if I would lose or the battle would be only remembered as evil... I will rather fight and die than live a long and unhappy life. | ” |
―Sturmgeist89 in his manifesto document | ||
Pekka's last video on YouTube.
Pekka-Eric Auvinen † (June 4, 1989 - November 7, 2007 [aged 18]), better known online as Sturmgeist89 or NaturalSelector89 (posthumously The YouTube Killer) was a Finnish YouTuber that committed the Jokela High School shooting in 2007. He previously made videos on massacres and showing his firearm.
Background[]
Pekka Auvinen was born in Tuusula, Finland, to parents Ismo Auvinen and Mikaela Vuorio. His father is a musician and named him after the guitarists Pekka Järvinen and Eric Clapton. According to the official report filed by the National Bureau of Investigation, Auvinen did moderately well in school and had plans to graduate in the following spring. He was regarded as a shy student, often isolating himself from others, and blushing easily when embarrassed. According to some, he had been the target of long-term bullying. Auvinen was known to be a believer in extreme left and right wing ideologies, such as communism, social Darwinism, and national socialism. He was also known to be an atheist.
YouTube career[]
Auvinen originally created his first YouTube account, NaturalSelector89 on March 15, 2007. Many of his videos were Auvinen talking about natural disasters and shootings, such as the Columbine school shooting and the Tokyo sarin attack. Alongside those, he also made videos criticizing other worldwide religions like and trying to disprove their existence. In some of these videos, he had said that he was a god and should be worshipped.
The NaturalSelector89 channel was suspended on October 19 for unknown reasons, so he created another channel on the same day called Sturmgeist89. This channel would be very similar to his old channel, as he would talk about massacres and religion. However, he would then create videos showcasing his guns after getting a gun license in October. In one example, he was testing his gun by shooting apples in the forest.[1] Auvinen would post his last video called "Jokela High School Massacre - 11/7/2007" in which it showed an image of the school, as well as two red-filtered photos of himself holding his gun, while the song "Stray Bullet" by KMFDM plays.
Many of his videos have been lost following the termination of his channels, but some of them have been archived.
Jokela School shooting[]
On the day of the shooting, he would upload multiple files on YouTube and Rapidshare of images, music, and his manifesto. At approximately 11:40 AM (09:40 UTC), Pekka-Eric Auvinen entered Jokela High School's ground-floor main hallway while having missed his first lesson. He encountered a student in the corridor and fatally shot him at 11:42, then moved to the lavatories. Soon after, other students found the victim's body but assumed he was rendered unconscious from a bump to his head. Other students heard the sound of gunshots but didn’t recognize them. Near the lavatories, Auvinen fatally shot two more students, prompting the school nurse to call emergency services. After shooting and killing a student outside the lavatory, Auvinen ran after the nurse, caught up to her, and fatally shot her and another student at 11:46.
At 11:47, head teacher Helena Kalmi was alerted to the shooting by the deputy head teacher. She immediately ordered all students and teachers via PA system to barricade themselves inside their classrooms. After this, Auvinen began shouting and firing randomly, discharging his gun a total of 53 times in the corridors. At one point, he encountered the mother of a student as she was entering the school but spared her. Auvinen then attempted to enter a classroom, shooting three times through the barricaded door and hitting a student in the toe. Auvinen then traveled to the school's second floor and found two students sitting on a bench in the corridor. While one student escaped uninjured, the other was shot and killed.
Auvinen began pouring two-stroke engine fuel (a petrol and oil mixture) on corridor walls and floors, but he was not able to ignite the fuel. He then went to the school canteen on the first floor and tried to enter, but the sliding glass doors were locked. After demanding to be let in, Auvinen fired through the glass, hitting some chairs inside. People hiding in the canteen were able to escape through the other end of the room and hid in the rooms behind the kitchen. No one in the canteen was injured.
At 11:54, Kalmi left the school with the education welfare officer and stopped between the building and a nearby pond to talk on the telephone. The education welfare officer went on ahead to the car park to guide rescue vehicles into the area. Auvinen, cursing, emerged from the school and encountered Kalmi, who tried to convince him to surrender. At 11:57, he shot her seven times in view of a group of students in the schoolyard, fatally wounding her.
Auvinen reentered the school, went back to the first floor, and began walking around, knocking on classroom doors. He then managed to enter an occupied comprehensive-school classroom. Inside, he shouted orders at some of the students, proclaimed a revolution, and urged the students to destroy school property. Despite firing two shots at a television set and a window, Auvinen left the classroom without shooting anyone.
A few minutes later, Auvinen spotted the first responding police officers and paramedics converging at the area of the inner court. He fired a shot at them through a window, but the bullet failed to penetrate the glass. At 12:03, Auvinen took another position near the main entrance and fired two more shots at police officers who tried to approach and negotiate with him. No officers were hit. Soon afterward, he walked into the lavatory next to the canteen and threw his jacket and bag on the floor before shooting himself in the head, ending the shooting at 12:04.
Auvinen was found and taken to the Töölö campus of Helsinki University Central Hospital at 14:45 (2:45), where he died at 22:15 (10:15) from the gunshot wound. The victims all sustained multiple injuries to the upper body and head.
A year later, another school shooting happened at Kauhajoki. As they found that the shooter (identified as Matti Juhani Saari, aka Wumpscut86) had bought his weapon at the same gun shop that Auvinen went, they began to speculate if these two were in contact. Later, they disregarded that and claimed Saari committed his crimes alone, though they found clear evidence he was inspired by the Jokela shooting.[2]
References[]
