Kauhajoki College Massacre: Saari's Army Career was Terminated Early

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Those who knew Matti Juhani Saari, the young man suspected of having carried out yesterday’s school killings in Kauhajoki, have expressed their consternation and surprise at his actions.
      The 22-year-old student’s former schoolmates and a teacher describe him as sociable and seemingly ordinary in every way.
      Saari was a student enrolled at the Seinäjoki Polytechnic, a school that includes the Kauhajoki School of Food Management.
      Saari was a second-year hospitality management/culinary arts student.
      A former classmate got to know Matti Saari at the beginning of the seventh grade in comprehensive school. At the time the blond and slender boy wore baggy jeans and was “perhaps quiet, but not the solitary type”.
      According to the classmate, the boy was occasionally bullied a little bit, but he also had friends. Saari was not withdrawn.
     
The schoolmate describes Saari as a nice boy. He and Saari were in the same class in the upper-level comprehensive school.
      “In the ninth grade he started mixing with some rather heavier circles, but I would still have never believed that something like this could happen.”
      The schoolmate last saw Saari towards the end of the summer.
      A male teacher who taught Saari last autumn remembers him as an interactive student. According to the teacher Saari got along well with everybody.
      “He was an average student, whose grades varied from two to five [on a 0-5 scale]”, the physics and chemistry teacher comments.
      In his view Saari did not exhibit any particular interest, for example, towards explosives or guns. “I thought he was quite a sympathetic type of guy”, says the teacher, profoundly shocked at Tuesday's bloodshed.
     
On the Internet the seemingly ordinary Saari’s persona is markedly more bipartite and nihilistic.
      On the web, he mentions “misanthropy” as his philosophy for life, while posing with a gun in the pictures of himself he posted up.
      Saari was an active user of Internet services such as the networking site IRC-Galleria, MySpace, and YouTube. The screen-name he used was Wumpscut86.
      Saari took part in online chats and discussions that glorified the American school shootings and Pekka-Eric Auvinen, the 18-year-old responsible for killing eight at Jokela High School last November. As a separate article indicates, there is a disturbing amount in common in the M.O.s of the two killers.
      From Saari’s home two messages were found after his death, in which he reports among other things that he hates humankind and that he has planned his deed since 2002.
      “The answer is Walther”, Saari writes.
      Apparently the weapon that Saari used was a semi-automatic Walther P22 .22 calibre pistol.
      In the user profiles that he had created for net sites, Saari described himself as an atheist, who was into heavy music and enjoyed horror films. He also liked to play violent so-called splatter video games.
     
Apparently Saari did not have a girlfriend. In August he left a message with an Internet dating service, in which he said he was looking for the company of 16 to 25-year-old females. In his ad Saari said he was 172 centimetres tall, a single man of medium build, and thathe did not want to have children.
      As his hobbies Saari mentioned computers, the drums, sex, beer, and target practice with his Walther P22 pistol.
      Saari does not appear to have had any prior convictions.
      Saari was a native of Pyhäjärvi in Northern Ostrobothnia in the West of Finland, where he attended the upper level comprehensive school.
     
Saari did not complete his military service. He entered the Finnish Defence Forces as a conscript in July 2006, but was transferred to the so-called E category in mid-term, resulting in his national service being interrupted. In most cases, persons in E are generally called back after two years to determine whether they are fit for service.
      He was due to report for such an inspection this November. The FDF have not divulged details of why Saari's military service was terminated, but there can be many reasons for the E-classification, among which mental health issues are one common cause.

Saari, 22, a trainee chef, walked calmly into a classroom where he was supposed to be taking a business studies exam and executed his teacher and nine fellow students with an automatic pistol.

Eight of the dead were women. He also shot another 21-year-old woman in the head but she survived.

Saari's friend Joni Helminen told how he finished the exam early and left Classroom No3 at Kauhajoki School of Hospitality minutes before Saari arrived and opened fire.

Mr Helminen, 21, said: "I used to go shooting with him once a week at a range and he lent me a gun. Matti liked shooting but I never believed he would shoot people. This is very difficult to understand.

"He was smart and did well at school. He did go to parties but he wasn't a very sociable person. He had some problems and he once told me that he had been to see a psychologist but he seemed the same afterwards as before. I was with him the night before and he seemed normal."

Saari set fire to the classroom and it could take two weeks to formally identify the burned bodies of his victims.