2015 shooting in the Czech Republic
The Uherský Brod shooting occurred on 24 February 2015 at the Družba restaurant in the town of Uherský Brod, Czech Republic. Nine people were killed, including the gunman, 63-year-old Zdeněk Kovář, who committed suicide after a standoff with police that lasted nearly two hours. In addition, one other person was injured. Uherský Brod is 260 kilometers (160 miles) east-southeast of the Czech capital Prague.
Prior to the 2020 Bohumín arson attack and the 2023 Prague shooting, the shooting was one of the two deadliest mass murders in the country's modern peacetime history, alongside a 1973 vehicular rampage committed by Olga Hepnarová. The circumstances of the shooting led to an examination of gun politics in the Czech Republic and police rules of engagement against active shooters. Czech media speculated that the rampage may have been triggered by an apparent attempt of the authorities to review Kovář's mental state.
Background.
Due to similarities between the perpetrators, the shooting was compared by Czech media and experts to an explosion that took place two years before in Frenštát pod Radhoštěm, another Moravian town lying 90 km northwards.
Before the shooting, Kovář's family became worried about his mental state to the point that they contacted authorities in connection with his possession of a gun license. Five days before the shooting, Kovář had received a police request to present a new health clearance under the threat of revoking his license. Before entering the Družba restaurant, Kovář visited at least two other venues. Those, however, had fewer customers, and Kovář left them immediately after entering.
Shooting.
Kovář entered the Družba building at about 12:30 pm, the restaurant's busiest daylight time. Around 20 people were in the small restaurant at the time. Before he entered the restaurant itself, which was situated on the first floor, Petr Gabriel, who was rushing to the bathroom, got ahead of Kovář on stairs leading to an upper floor.
Armed with a CZ 75B semi-automatic pistol, which is manufactured in the town, and an Alfa 820 revolver, Kovář opened fire without any warning immediately after entering the restaurant, shooting his victims directly in the head. Eight died immediately or soon afterwards. One female victim, who was shot twice in the chest, managed to leave the restaurant, while Gabriel remained hidden in the restaurant's bathroom. Eight other people escaped the building through the back door. Another customer, Jiří Nesázel, who took cover under a table, used a moment in which Kovář was reloading, and threw a chair at him, hitting him on the neck. This gave him an opportunity to run out through the front door with two other people.
Authorities received the first distress call from a person who escaped from the restaurant at 12:38 pm, and the first police car reached the building at 12:47 pm. The policemen were armed with the standard equipment for Czech police officers: holstered pistols (mostly with variants of CZ 75 that was also used by Kovář), body armor, and a select-fire rifle stored in their cars. The first two officers to arrive immediately entered the building with body armor on and guns drawn. Kovář, taking cover behind a bar opposite to the door, opened fire on the officers as soon as they entered. The police noted people lying on the ground and sitting on chairs between them and Kovář. Not knowing the status of the civilians, the police decided not to return fire, covered the exits, and waited for the arrival of a tactical unit. By this time, other police units as well as the first ambulance car had arrived, taking away the wounded female victim who had escaped.
At 12:56 pm, Kovář called a Prima TV station crime news reporter, claiming that he was being harassed by multiple people and that he had hostages whom he threatened to kill. The journalist who spoke to Kovář called the police, who were already sending all available units to the location.
A police negotiator contacted Kovář by phone at 13:07. During negotiations, Kovář claimed to have hostages, although all of the people remaining inside were most likely already dead (apart from Gabriel, who was hiding in the bathroom, unbeknownst to Kovář). The hostage claim delayed police entry into the building. Kovář stopped communicating at about 14:00 p.m. After attempts to contact him failed, the tactical team breached the building at 14:23 p.m. Upon the team's entry, Kovář immediately shot himself dead.
Apart from stun grenades, the policemen did not fire a single shot. After securing the restaurant, the police let in a large number of medical personnel. The only person alive who remained inside the building was Gabriel, who had been hiding in the bathroom for the entire duration of the incident.
Victims.
A total of eight people, excluding the gunman, died in the rampage. This included seven men, aged 27 to 66, and one woman, aged 47. Another woman, aged 37, survived despite being shot twice in the chest.
Perpetrator.
Zdeněk Kovář (c. 1951 – 24 February 2015) was 63 years old at the time of his death and lived with his wife in a house not far from the scene of the shooting. Neighbours described the couple as deranged and known for loudness and verbal abuse. Kovář was the son of a worker in the local (ČZUB) firearms factory, the largest small arms manufacturer in the country. Formerly an electrician, he had been unemployed for at least ten years. Kovář's wife was taken to a psychiatric hospital following the shooting.
Kovář had held a gun license since 2000, and legally owned both of the guns he used.
Aftermath.
As more information about Kovář's notoriety among neighbors surfaced, focus of investigation shifted towards the circumstances under which he gained and retained a gun license and firearms. In order to be granted a gun license in the Czech Republic, a person must pass a qualification exam, receive a health clearance by a general practitioner, who may require a further examination by a specialist, such as a psychological or psychiatric evaluation, and must pass a background check. According to Section 23 of the Czech Firearms Act, an applicant may not be granted a license if they have committed more than one misdemeanor against public order in the previous three years. Similarly, the law further makes a gun license inaccessible to people with mental illnesses. The license must be renewed every five years (every ten years for licenses issued after 1 July 2014). The renewal requires the presentation of a new health clearance, while the police conduct a new background check. Kovář's license was renewed in January 2015.
Misdemeanors registry.
Kovář applied for a gun license renewal in accordance with the law. According to Kovář's brother-in-law, neighbors, and a local policeman who had repeated contacts with him, Kovář and his wife had committed misdemeanors against public order. The municipality of Uherský Brod, which deals with such misdemeanors, did not register them and thus Kovář had an apparently clean history. In turn, this satisfied the requirements and he had his license renewed.
The renewal of his license was due to the fact that while there is a central registry of crimes and of traffic misdemeanors, no such registry exists for other misdemeanors in the Czech Republic. In the case where a non-traffic misdemeanor is solved on the spot (e.g. fining by a policeman), no record of it is made. Only when the investigated person or the police refuse to deal with the misdemeanor on the spot, is an administrative proceeding before a municipal misdemeanor committee initiated and if convicted, then a record of it is made by the municipality.
The Czech government had made a decision to introduce a central registry for all misdemeanors in October 2014, planning to have the system working within two years. As police are obliged to revoke a gun license when the licensee has committed more than one misdemeanor against public order in a period of three years, the central registry of misdemeanors might have allowed police to effectively revoke the license long before the shooting.
Health clearance.
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At any time, the police may order a new health clearance inspection if they have a reasonable concern that the person is not healthy enough to continue holding their license.
According to the Uherský Brod mayor Patrik Kunčar, Kovář's family members tried to prevent him from having the license renewed by pleading with his general practitioner not to grant him the necessary health clearance, since they felt threatened and considered him mentally unstable. Nevertheless, Kovář received clearance from his general practitioner and presented it as a part of his license renewal application on 19 January 2015.
After renewing the license in January, the police were contacted by an unspecified person who reported to them on Kovář's mental state. The police subsequently contacted Kovář's general practitioner and psychiatrist, and on 17 February 2015 ordered a health reevaluation. He received the letter on 19 February 2015, five days before the shooting. Under the law, Kovář was obliged to present a new health clearance within a month or lose the license. Czech media has speculated that the apparent attempt of the authorities to review Kovář's mental state may have triggered the rampage.
A few days after the shooting, the Ministry of Interior announced its deliberation about making the gun license registry accessible to psychiatrists in order to give them the ability to report to police possible changes of mental state of their patients having an impact on their eligibility to possess firearms. This was, however, rejected by psychiatric associations. They argued that psychiatrists' main goal is to cure patients, and that potential patients may be more likely to avoid psychiatric treatment for fear of losing their gun license.
Police response.
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Active shooter engagement rules of the Czech police
Police were criticized for acting in contradiction with their own rules of active shooter engagement which, inter alia, include the following:
One of the main topics of debate after Kovář's rampage became the way police dealt with him, especially whether the first two responding officers were, under the circumstances, supposed to immediately engage and neutralize Kovář, and whether the decision to wait for the arrival of the tactical unit was sound. The debate became more vocal after a cook, who managed to escape the rampage, claimed that she heard a slow series of single shots coming from the restaurant after the police had retreated. Another witness, who escaped unharmed, refuted this version of events, saying that shots were fired only during the initial ten minutes leading up to the point of police entry, with no shots heard thereafter.
Police said the first responders decided not to engage because they saw civilians lying and sitting in the line of fire between them and Kovář; they didn't know their status, and Kovář had taken cover behind a bar with only his head and hand holding the pistol visible. According to the Chief of the Zlín Regional Police Department, Jaromír Tkadleček, the Uherský Brod district units present had enough manpower and equipment, including select-fire rifles, to engage Kovář. However, they decided to withdraw due to Kovář's claim of having hostages and stated intent to negotiate their release.
Apart from local units, a special ordnance unit was called in from its regional headquarters in Zlín. It arrived about 30 minutes later. Because there are eight tactical teams covering fourteen Czech regions and none in Zlín, a tactical team from Brno was called in. The team's fifteen members reached the restaurant by cars in 66 minutes, opting not to use their helicopter that has a capacity of six. Furthermore, the elite police tactical unit "URNA" was called from Prague but its helicopters arrived after the end of the standoff. According to Tkadleček, even if URNA had its headquarters directly in Uherský Brod, it would not have changed anything about the timing nor the manner in which the police engaged Kovář.
Zlín region politicians announced they would call for the establishment of a local tactical team. Meanwhile, the Minister of Interior commented that the police were already in the process of hiring 4,000 new officers (about 10% of its total manpower), thus reversing cuts enacted by previous governments. Experts further pointed out the necessity to provide more CQB training to policemen in small municipalities and at rural areas. This type of training had until that point been largely aimed and directed at police officers in large