Witnesses have described scenes of panic inside and outside Charles University after gunshots rang out in the heart of historical Prague on Thursday, sparking chaos and fear in an area bustling with locals and tourists.
The shooting began shortly after Jakob Weizman, a journalist and masters student at the university, arrived to sit an Albanian language exam. It was just him and the professor in the small room, he said. “And during the exam I heard gunshots and I heard screaming.”
Both of them froze, unsure what to do. “Eventually police started showing up and there were more gunshots and screaming.”
Weizman locked the classroom door and the pair put up a makeshift barricade, frantically shoving tables, chairs and anything else they could find against the door.
Currently stuck inside my classroom in Prague. Shooter is dead, but we are waiting to be evacuated. Praying to make it out alive.
— Jakob Weizman (@jakobweizman) December 21, 2023
Locked the door before the shooter tried to open it. Fucking hell. pic.twitter.com/wYyhOe5U6p
“I think the shooter went from inside of the faculty to the outside to the balcony where he was shooting on people from outside,” the 25-year-old told the Guardian. “There were people trying to escape over the ledge.”
Several images showed what appeared to be students crouching on a ledge near the roof of the building, seemingly attempting to hide from the gunman. Police later said at least 14 people were killed and more than 20 injured.
Soon after the barricade was in place, Weizman said he heard someone trying to open the door of the room he was in. “He was going through each classroom to see if people were there to shoot them,” he said. “We locked our door just five minutes before he tried to open our door.”
He and his professor remained in the room for about an hour, dialling up their loved ones and asking people to let police know they were trapped in room 309A.
Weizman said: “I was just trying to tell people what was happening, calling my mom, calling my girlfriend. If it’s the end, trying to say what you can before – I don’t know. You’re never prepared for the situation.”
After initially hearing “a lot” of shooting and screaming, things appeared to calm down for a bit. “And then there was a lot more shooting and screaming 30 minutes later.”
Eventually the pair were evacuated by police. “As we were walking out, there was just blood all over the faculty.”
Hours later a makeshift memorial sprouted up outside the university, with mourners lighting hundreds of candles outside the ornate main building.
The Czech president, Petr Pavel, expressed gratitude for the condolences and words of support that had poured in from around the world.
“My thoughts are still with families of the victims, injured and those who had to fight for their lives at the Faculty of Arts,” he wrote on social media. “No one can imagine the fear and mental strain they went through yesterday.”
Among those who attended the impromptu vigil was student Kristof Unger. “[A] few of my friends study at the philosophy faculty at Charles University,” Unger told the Associated Press. “And they have been really traumatised by the shooting there and I just wanted to make them feel a little bit better.”
The university’s rector, Milena Králíčková, was among the throngs of mourners who were lighting candles. “The academic community is shaken, deeply shaken,” she told the Associated Press.
The mass shooting – believed to be the worst in the Czech Republic’s modern history – unfolded across the river from the Prague Castle and a short walk from the Old Town, which ranks among Europe’s main tourist attractions.
As panic rippled through the area on Thursday, police vehicles and ambulances sped across the 14th-century Charles Bridge. In the city centre, where hours earlier throngs of people had been visiting the busy Christmas markets, officers emptied squares.
“We heard loud gun shots,” tourist Joe Hyland, 18, from Truro, Cornwall, told the BBC. “But we didn’t think much of it until we heard people screaming, people running away, sirens. Then we thought this is serious.”
Another witness, Ivo Havranek, 43, initially dismissed the loud bangs, thinking it was a group of rowdy tourists or coming from a nearby movie set. “Then suddenly there were students and teachers running out of the building,” he told Reuters. “I went through the crowd not realising what is actually going on. I wasn’t ready to admit that something like that could happen in Prague.”
Only when he saw police officers carrying automatic rifles did he understand it was serious. “They shouted at me to run.”
Student Daniel Broz said he was across the river from the university when the shooting began. As the sound of gunshots filled the air, he had no idea what was going on. “And then a flurry of police cars passing by was absolutely surreal,” he told Reuters. “Especially as a Czech who has never witnessed an event similar to this before.”
Newlyweds Tom Leese, 34, and Rachael, 31, were on their honeymoon and having a drink in the Slivovitz Museum, when a policeman came in and started shouting loudly. Police later explained in English there was an active shooter and everyone needed to stay inside and stay down, Leese told PA Media.
“The staff were very calm, turned all the lights off very quickly and urged us to stay calm.” The couple, from Merstham in Surrey, were kept in the museum for more than an hour as sirens blared outside.
Petr Nedoma, director of the Rudolfinum Gallery at a concert hall across Palach Square, told Czech TV he had seen the shooter. “I saw a young person on the gallery who had some weapon in his hand, like an automatic weapon, and shooting toward the Manes Bridge. Repeatedly, with some interruptions, then I saw as he shot, put his hands up and threw the weapon down on the street, it lay there on the pedestrian crossing,” he said.
Czech police later described the gunman as a 24-year-old Charles University student who they believed may been influenced by similar shootings abroad. Police said on Friday that the gunman killed himself on the balcony of the university building as police officers approached him.
In the early hours of Friday, the scene of the shooting remained sealed off by police. Weizman said his next task was to recover the belongings he had left in the exam room when he was hurriedly evacuated.
He was bracing himself. “I don’t think I could ever set foot in the faculty again,” he said. “It never happened in 15 years of living in the US. But it happens for the first time in Czechia.”
