The parents of a 13-year-old boy who killed nine children and a guard at a Belgrade school have been sentenced to 14 and a half years in prison for child neglect and illegal weapons possession. The case has sent a shockwave through European justice systems, prompting the UK to reassess its own safeguards around youth crime and parental responsibility. The boy, who used his father’s registered guns, had been described as withdrawn and isolated.
At home, his parents were reportedly absent, absorbed in work and their own lives. The tragedy has laid bare a societal failing: the assumption that a child’s emotional state will eventually right itself, that adolescence is just a phase. Social workers in Serbia had flagged concerns, but no intervention was made.
And now, a nation is left to wonder whether jail time for parents is a deterrent or a scapegoat. In the UK, the Ministry of Justice has launched a review into how schools, police and social services share information about troubled children, particularly those with access to firearms. Current law holds parents liable only in cases of persistent truancy or antisocial behaviour; this would expand that scope to include neglect of mental health.
Critics argue that poverty and systemic failures cannot be solved by making examples of grieving families. But on the streets of Belgrade and London, a new consensus is forming: when a child becomes a killer, the silence at home is no longer a private matter.
