Candles lit outside Czech hospital after deadly shooting

People lit candles and laid flowers outside the entrance of a hospital in the eastern Czech city of Ostrava on Tuesday (December 10) evening, after a gunman killed six people before fleeing and fatally shooting himself in the head. The attack happened in the waiting room in the early morning at the outpatient clinic of the University Hospital. Police said they received calls at 7:19 a.m. (0619 GMT) and officers were on the scene five minutes later. The 42-year-old shooter, identified as Ctirad Vitasek, fled the hospital after the attack, prompting a manhunt involving hundreds of officers. He later shot himself in the head at his car with a police helicopter flying overhead. It was unclear what motivated the shooting in Ostrava, a city of 290,000 people 350 km (217 miles) east of the capital Prague and near the border with Poland. The head of the regional police department said the attacker, who did not have a gun license and had a criminal record including instances of violence and theft, was silent as he carried out the shooting with a 9-millimetre Czech handgun. It was the worst shooting in the Czech Republic, where gun crime is relatively rare since a man shot eight people dead and then killed himself at a restaurant in Uhersky Brod in 2015. LOCAL RESIDENT, ROMAN PANEK, SAYING: "(It's) a really a big tragedy because until now, such acts were seen on the news, they only touched us through the TV screens from remote America, but now, it is 200 metres behind my house, my daughter went to school nearby half an hour after the event. It is a huge shock, especially the motive which is not clear yet. Nobody is able to rationally absorb why this happened. Is it the consequence of the times (that we live in), of the society - it's hard to say. There are many questions but this will be much help to the relatives (of the victims) at this point." LOCAL RESIDENT, LADA ZORANOVA, SAYING: "I work at a kindergarten nearby. When we learned about this, it was a big shock, so I came to see the situation. The atmosphere is very gloomy, we were all very affected."

Added 11 Apr 2026