A deeply disturbing video filmed inside a classroom just hours before a deadly school shooting in southern Turkey has gone viral, showing a 14-year-old student calmly pacing while forming a gun shape with his hands under his chin. Shortly afterward, the boy carried out a horrifying rampage that left nine people dead and at least 20 injured, marking the second school shooting in Turkey within a single day.

The attack took place on Wednesday at a middle school in Kahramanmaraş. The shooter, identified as 14-year-old Isa Aras Mersinli, arrived armed with five firearms and seven magazines stolen from his father, a retired police inspector. He hid the weapons in his backpack and opened fire indiscriminately on two separate classrooms, killing eight children between the ages of 10 and 11 and one 55-year-old female teacher.

The victims have been named locally as Mustafa Aslan, Şuranur Sevgi Kazıcı, Zeynep Kılınç, Furkan Sancak Balal (11), Bayram Nabi Şişik (10), Belinay Nur Poyraz (10), Adnan Göktürk Yeşil (11), Kerem Erdem Güngör, and teacher Ayla Kara (55). At least 20 others were wounded, with six reported in critical condition. The shooter himself died during the incident, though authorities have not yet confirmed whether it was by suicide or police intervention.

The pre-attack video, recorded by a fellow student, shows Mersinli walking in circles in the classroom, deliberately holding his hands as if aiming a pistol directly under his chin. The footage has spread rapidly online, intensifying public horror and prompting urgent questions about why the warning signs were not acted upon. Survivors described scenes of pure terror, with children screaming and fleeing; some jumped from second-storey windows into the arms of classmates waiting below. One student recalled the shooter warning a friend, “I will kill you.”

This massacre followed just one day after another school shooting in southeastern Turkey, where a former student armed with a pump-action shotgun injured 16 people. In response, schools across Kahramanmaraş were closed on Thursday and Friday. Funerals for the victims were held on Thursday amid heavy emotion, while teachers’ unions in Ankara called for a two-day strike, holding banners that read “We will not surrender our schools to violence.”

Turkish Interior Minister Mustafa Çiftçi described the attack as “personal” and not linked to terrorism. Police have detained the shooter’s father and issued arrest warrants for 83 individuals accused of posting content on social media that glorified the crime or disturbed public order. Investigators seized digital devices from the boy’s home and his father’s vehicle for forensic analysis. Reports indicate the shooter’s WhatsApp profile featured an image referencing Elliot Rodger, the perpetrator of the 2014 Isla Vista killings in California.

Despite Turkey’s strict gun control laws — which require licenses, registration, background checks, and mental health evaluations — the weapons used belonged to a former police officer, raising serious questions about how a teenager gained such easy access.

The back-to-back school shootings this week have shattered the relative rarity of such incidents in Turkey and triggered nationwide soul-searching. In May 2024, a former student killed a school principal in Istanbul after being expelled, but mass-casualty attacks inside schools have remained uncommon until now.

As the country mourns, the haunting image of the 14-year-old making a gun sign in class has become a grim symbol of the tragedy. Witnesses and officials are still piecing together the motive, while communities demand stronger school security, better mental health support for students, and stricter oversight of firearms even in law enforcement households.

Funerals brought together grieving families and shocked residents, with growing calls for unity and prevention. This latest massacre serves as a painful reminder that no school should ever become a battlefield — and that even subtle warning signs must never be ignored.

The victims were young lives full of promise, cut short in a moment of unimaginable horror that no parent or teacher should ever have to face. Their names and faces are now etched into Turkey’s collective memory as the nation grapples with how to ensure such a nightmare never happens again.