Sources confirm that in a courtroom in Belgrade this morning, prosecutors are rewriting the rulebook on accountability. They are charging the parents of a 14-year-old boy who opened fire at his school in May last year, killing nine students and a guard. The boy is too young to be tried as an adult and has been placed in a psychiatric institution. But now, his mother and father face criminal neglect charges for failing to prevent the attack.
Uncovered documents show that the father kept a safe full of weapons and ammunition, which the boy accessed easily. The mother failed to secure the firearms despite knowing her son had a history of violent behaviour. The prosecution argues that their reckless disregard for safety directly enabled the massacre. This is unprecedented in Serbian law and has ignited a fierce debate about how far parental responsibility should stretch.
The trial is being closely watched across Europe. If convicted, the parents could face up to 12 years in prison. Their lawyers say they are being scapegoated for a systemic failure in school security and mental health support. But prosecutors insist that the evidence is clear. They point to text messages from the boy's father that suggest he was more concerned about his own gun collection than his son's mental state.
This is not just about one family. It is about a culture of gun ownership that goes unchallenged in the Balkans. Serbia has some of the most lenient gun laws in Europe, a legacy of the Yugoslav wars. Almost half a million registered weapons are in private hands. The school shooting was the deadliest in decades and forced a national reckoning. New legislation tightened gun control, but this trial goes further. It asks whether we can hold individuals responsible for the actions of those they should have protected.
I have spoken to legal experts who say this could set a precedent for similar cases across the continent. But they also warn that it risks blurring the line between criminal negligence and the inherent unpredictability of human behaviour. Is a parent truly responsible for every action of their child? Or does this cross into punishing people for being poor guardians rather than for specific crimes?
Inside the courtroom, the parents sat stone-faced as the prosecutor laid out the sequence of events. The boy had expressed a fascination with mass shooters. He had even drawn a detailed plan of the school. His mother found the drawings and did nothing. The father saw his son watching violent content online and confiscated his phone, but left the guns within reach. The morning of the attack, the boy took three handguns and two rifles from an unlocked cabinet. He fired 60 rounds in eight minutes.
The victims' families are watching from the gallery. They want justice. They want someone to blame. But some wonder if the right people are in the dock. The school had no metal detectors. The police did not respond for nearly an hour. The social services system had flagged the boy as a risk but took no action. The trial of the parents may be a distraction from those failures.
Still, the prosecution is relentless. They are using every scrap of evidence, every digital footprint, every overlooked warning sign. They want to make an example of these parents. And in a country still reeling from the shock of a child killing children, they might just win. This case will send a message to every parent in Serbia: if you own a gun and your child is troubled, you own the consequences. I will be following every turn of this trial. The money, the power, the accountability. It all comes down to who pays the price for a bullet.
