Finnish college shooting leaves at least 9 dead(CNN) -- The suspect in a shooting rampage at a college in Finland that left at least nine dead has died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, a hospital official told CNN Tuesday. The male suspect survived for a while before dying at Tempere University Hospital in southern Finland, medical director Matti Lehto said. He had no family with him. Earlier, MTV-3 of Finland reported that police interviewed and released the suspect a day before Tuesday's bloody carnage.
The authorities say they became interested in the 22-year-old student after he allegedly posted violent videos on YouTube. Four videos of a man firing a pistol at a shooting range were posted by a "Mr. Saari" from the town of Kauhajoki -- where the college is based -- according to his YouTube profile. The profile also included a video tribute to the Columbine High School shooters -- Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold -- at the top of the man's favorites list. The videos were posted over a three-week period earlier this month. None were posted in the last week
The account was suspended within hours of the shooting. MTV-3's Foreign Editor Risto Puolimatka told CNN that the suspect was also issued with a temporary gun license last month. It was the gunman's first license, Puolimatka said. Officials say the man began firing at around 11 a.m. local time in a classroom at the college in the town of Kauhajoki in southwestern Finland before shooting himself. Several other people were wounded in the attack, but officials could not immediately say how many.
Jukka Forsberg, a maintenance worker at the school, said the man was wearing a ski mask and walked into the building with a large bag, the agency said. About 150 students were on campus at the time. Smoke billowed from a building on campus but officials could not immediately say what caused the fire. Three hours after the shooting, firefighters were still trying to bring a blaze under control, fire official Olle Peauttonen told CNN
Tapio Varmola, who was visiting the school at the time, told CNN he was in a building about two blocks away when the shootings occurred. "I did not hear anything," he said. "We did not know what happened. It became clear later." After the shootings, he said, he heard students shouting. Police came about 10 minutes after they were called, Varmola said. "It took two hours to get this situation ended," he said.
The school taught late teens and young adults, Jarkko Sipila of MTV 3 told CNN. "It's more or less like an agricultural or professional school where people teach how to make food or how to cook in big kitchen, in industrial kitchens," he said. Kauhajoki, with a population of about 15,000, is about 290km (180 miles) from the capital, Helsinki.
The incident comes almost a year after another school shooting left nine people, including the gunman, dead in the Finnish town of Tuusala. Before that shooting, the gunman, 18-year-old student Pekka-Eric Auvinen, posted a video on YouTube titled "Jokela High School Massacre 11/7/2007" -- identifying the date and location of the attack.
"All these memories are being brought back and people are asking the question, 'Why again'?" Sipila said. Finland enjoys a strong tradition of hunting and has a high proportion of gun ownership, with 2 million firearms owned in a nation of 5 million people.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/09/23/finland.school.shooting/index.htmlUpdate: 11 people dead, including the shooter
R.I.P. to all the victims 
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