General information about the tragedy
On December 7, 2023, at 9:15 a.m., the Bryansk city dispatch service received a report of a shooting at Gymnasium No. 5. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation in the Bryansk region, one of the students (Alina Afanaskina) brought a firearm into the gymnasium building and fired several shots. The incident took place in the biology classroom. The girl used a "Bekas-3" shotgun belonging to her father, which was wrapped in graph paper, and she also had a hunting knife in her right boot. As a result of the shooting, two people died, including the attacker herself, and five were injured.
Here we want to state the main point for which this website was created. Alina Afanaskina WAS NOT a school shooter in the usual sense of the word, as she did not intend to attack the educational institution itself and stage a massacre there. Obviously, she was NOT a terrorist either, since there is no political motive in this case.
She came to the gymnasium with a weapon to take revenge on her classmates who had been humiliating her for a long time, mocking her, essentially mentally destroying her, and making her an outcast in the class.
The act of revenge could have taken place anywhere else, in the courtyard, in a sports club, etc. It just so happened that her tormentors were all together at the gymnasium, and it was easiest to settle the score with them there. All the material we have gathered confirms this.
First media reports on the causes of the shooting
As it later turned out, the information that appeared in the press in the first days after the tragedy was the most reliable. This is because the Bryansk authorities were in a state of shock, and had not yet managed to silence the participants and witnesses. Subsequently, all those involved in the case were made to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
“All the teenagers who knew Alina agree on one thing – the girl was bullied in class. According to Mash, this had been going on since elementary school.”
“According to one of the gymnasium students, she was bullied because ‘she wasn't like everyone else.’ According to another student, ‘because she was unsociable.’”
https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2023/12/12/ty-tupaia-kak-taburetka
“The girl who carried out the shooting at Bryansk Gymnasium No. 5 was bullied by her classmates, students told RBC.”
“She was bullied. Maybe she went crazy because of the bullying. <...> She was a withdrawn girl – the one who started the shooting – and she started with the boys because they were making fun of her,” told a friend of the eighth-grade students where the shooting took place told RBC.
“She said that the shooter initially started walking around the classroom with a weapon. Some of the students hid under their desks, while her friends managed to run out of the classroom,” she noted.
https://www.rbc.ru/society/07/12/2023/657180c29a794742733cd904
“Acquaintances of the family and parents of the girl shooter's classmates are justifying her.”
“And all the townspeople felt sorry for Alina. Everywhere you hear: poor girl, the adults are to blame, they didn't keep an eye on her.”
In Bryansk, the culprits in the tragedy and the exact nature of the bullying were identified fairly quickly.
“There was a nest of vipers in the school,” Komsomolskaya Pravda quotes a woman as saying. “There is one ‘black sheep’ in the class. This is a girl (the instigator), she was not harmed, but she will have to live with this. This is where you should look for incitement to suicide. Talk to the children. One of them will definitely tell you everything. Because I spoke with the parents of her classmates, and they told me everything. The two boys who were harmed were the henchmen of that same girl; they helped oppress this girl (Alina). No, no one beat her. There was moral pressure. They said that she was not like everyone else. They pressured her, saying that she was a gray mouse.”
https://bryansk.bezformata.com/listnews/bryanske-ukazali-na-vinovnih-v-travle/125243117/
Alina's Fake Diary
Shortly after the tragedy, a diary allegedly written by Alina Afanaskina appeared on the internet, which was later found to be fake upon examination.
The last change in the document occurred after the shooting; the gymnasium students did not attend school on September 1st, which contradicts the entry in the diary. The layout of the rooms in the apartment where Alina lived is incorrectly described, there is a mention of storing a rifle in the garage, which did not actually happen, etc.
Nevertheless, the investigation took the easiest path for itself, and based on the fake diary, Alina's father, Dmitry Afanaskin, was detained. Among other things, he was charged with driving his daughter to suicide. That is, they shifted the blame from the guilty party to the innocent one. Subsequently, this charge was dropped.
We provide a link to Alina's diary for informational purposes only; we repeat, this document was NOT written by Alina.
Strange behaviour of the classmates' parents
Even in the first reports about the tragedy, some strange behaviour was noticed in the parents of Alina's classmates.
https://www.kp.ru/daily/27592/4864573/
What stands out:
Firstly, the parents of the children who were shot (or subjected to serious risk, since shooting with buckshot in a confined space is dangerous for everyone) are defending the girl who did the shooting. They write that they understand her, that she is not to blame, but rather the adults who failed to supervise. Failed to supervise what?
Secondly, the parents of the children who suffered (physically and emotionally) do not want any investigation or public disclosure of the causes of the tragedy.
From this, certain conclusions can be unequivocally drawn:
- the parents of the classmates were well aware of Alina's motives and the reasons for the shooting.
- an honest investigation and public disclosure of the results of the tragedy would be extremely unpleasant for them and their children.
This indirectly fully confirms the initial version published in the media immediately after the shooting. Alina was bullied for a long time by a group of classmates. The entire class, the children's parents, and the gymnasium teachers knew about the bullying. It is simply impossible to explain the parents' behavior after the tragedy in any other way. More details on this in the "Bullying by classmates" section.
Details of the shooting
Information with details of the shooting has finally reached the media. It is important to carefully study them to answer some questions.
https://bryansk.bezformata.com/listnews/bryanskoy-gimnazii-5-rasskazala-o-strelbe/125305353/
As is often the case in such situations, there are some inconsistencies in the testimonies of several witnesses, but there are details that appear in absolutely all of them.
"Everything happened in a matter of minutes. The children lay down on the floor and hid under the desks. She (Alina) was walking around the classroom at that time and shooting at the children."
This completely refutes the assumption that the shooting was chaotic. Think for yourself, or even better, conduct a simple investigative experiment. Take a clock and slowly walk around the room for several minutes (not seconds). This is how a person who doesn't care who they shoot at would behave. Otherwise, it would be easier to shoot those who are closer and not walk around. And it would take much less time. Of course, many noted that:
"She simply looked at her classmates, firing shots at the students in the first and second rows."
Alina and Masha died in the shooting.
However, there are no contradictions in this. Some of her bullies were sitting in the front rows, and there were quite a few of them in the class. She started with them because it was easier that way. And then she walked along the rows looking for the others.
There was also information about a first warning shot into the ceiling, but there is no official data on this.
The weapon used was a Bekas-3 hunting rifle. The magazine of this weapon holds 6 cartridges, and one more can be in the barrel. Alina fired 5 targeted shots at her classmates, and the last one at herself.
Theoretically, there could have been one more unused cartridge in the weapon. Or the first warning shot did happen after all, and then everything fits together, all the ammunition was used up.
Among the girl's belongings, a box for hunting cartridges was found; such a box holds 10 cartridges. Whether there were any other cartridges in the box is unknown.
The Bekas-3 shotgun and the cartridge box found in Alina's bag.
Also, a hunting knife was found in the boot, and a fire starter, lighters, and matches were found in the bag. None of this was used in the attack. The knife in the boot was probably hidden in case someone tried to take the shotgun away. And all the means for arson were most likely a kind of plan “B”, in case the weapon failed.
The Inconsistency of the "Heroic" Version
Some publications present arguments that if it weren't for the heroic actions of some teachers, there could have been more victims. Well, Russians love pathos. However, this "heroic" version finds no real confirmation. See for yourself.
Alina fired as many targeted shots at her classmates as she wanted, and each shot hit its target. Then she went to a corner, squatted down, and shot herself.
Most likely, she used up all her ammunition, and the bullet she fired at herself was the last one.
It turns out that no one prevented the girl from carrying out her revenge plan. So, who are these children "saved" by the teachers?
The teacher who, according to some media reports, shielded the children with her body, was not injured (she is not on the official list of victims). How can this be explained? After all, the cartridges were loaded with steel shot.
The girl walked around the classroom for several minutes. This means that someone was walking around the classroom with her all this time and trying to shield those she was aiming at? This would require desperate courage and complete disregard for one's own life. If anyone in the class possessed such qualities, it would have been easier and probably safer to immediately try to take the rifle away from the 14-year-old schoolgirl, who was not known for her exceptional strength.
Most likely, the "heroic" version was an attempt to put a brave face on a bad situation. Because almost all the actions of the gymnasium teachers and security personnel were extremely unprofessional. More details on this can be found in the sections "Responsibility of Teachers" and "Gymnasium Security".
Immediately after the shooting
Immediately after the shooting in the classroom, the first person to arrive was the physical education teacher, Maxim Korabets. He provided first aid to the children.
It is worth noting that the ambulance arrived only 40 minutes later. Although Bryansk is a regional center, and the gymnasium is located in a prestigious area. All this time, no one provided any qualified medical assistance to the seriously wounded Masha Nesmachnaya.
“She was alive, I tried to help her – I pressed a cloth to the wound. We waited for the ambulance. But we didn't wait, the doctors took about 40 minutes to arrive. I didn't have a watch, I didn't see the time, but by my feeling, the girl was definitely alive for about 25 minutes. She was looking, she was breathing, I tried to talk to her. She didn't answer anything, but her eyes were open,” the physical education teacher recalls.