'Complete shock': Residents of Graz in anguish after school attack: Reporter's notebook
GRAZ, Austria -- There has never been a mass shooting in Graz. Never.
But at around 10 a.m. Tuesday morning, a 21-year-old Austrian man walked into what is supposed to be the safest of spaces, a school, and gunned down teenagers and at least one teacher, police said, in this country's second-biggest city.
Graz is a beautiful medieval city, which on Tuesday lived one of its darkest days in modern history.
"Our city has never seen anything like this before. It's beyond words" Graz's mayor, Elke Kahr, told us after a memorial service at the city's main cathedral.
She said it was hard to tell right now how the victims and families of those killed are really doing.
"Suddenly, you're faced with questions like: How do you say goodbye to your child?" the mayor told ABC News. The mayor's eyes looked tired and bloodshot from crying after the most traumatic of days.
"Every form of help" for the survivors and relatives of the victims would be forthcoming, she said in a resolute voice.
Over the years, as a journalist, I've lost count of how many cities I've visited in the wake of attacks when individuals kill mercilessly for no discernible reason. Officials in Austria say they are yet to find any evidence that there was any motive behind Tuesday's attack.
At a candlelight vigil for the victims in Graz's main square late on Tuesday night people gathered, trying to make sense of what appears to be the most senseless of acts.
"I think the first thing is shock, to be honest. I think you can't react the other way. I think everyone in the school is in complete shock," said 24-year-old student Helene Parr, who knows people at the BORG Dreierschützengasse school, where the mass shooting took place.
Parr, like others we spoke to after today's memorial service in Graz, never imagined such a horrific attack could happen in their "small city."
"This is the worst-case scenario you could possibly think of," she told me.
When she first saw reports of a shooting, she said, she thought it might be fake, but as more and more news came out, "the seriousness hit."
When she learnt the shooting had happened in a school which she knows well, her sense of shock grew.
"Schools should be a safe place," she said.
Mass shootings in Austria are very rare. As Helene told me, so rare, that before today the possibility of a mass shooting occurring in her city didn't cross her mind.
She is still waiting to hear if anyone she knew at the BORG Dreierschützengasse school has been affected, adding that "our heart goes out to everybody."
Her friend Simon Marschnig said he first saw the news of the shooting on Instagram and felt "overwhelmed" by shock and fear.
He said it would be hard for the city to deal with the level of trauma, but said "many people" have already donated blood for the victims, saying that at one point the line was a four-hour wait to donate.
"That really showed us how big of a community we have in Graz," he told me.
"I think it's now really time to stand together," adding that "there's really a strong community to do that."
Austria has more relaxed gun ownership laws than many other European countries, so I asked Parr if she thought today's shooting would open-up the debate on whether those laws needed to change.
"That's a good question," she replied.
"It could be, but I think we don't have problems with guns," she added. "I think it more opens the debate about mental health."
