On the morning of March 13, 1996, in Dunblane, Scotland, 43-year-old Thomas Hamilton closed the door of his car for the last time. At 9.30am, armed with 743 rounds of ammunition and four handguns, he walked towards the gym of the local primary school.
The events that occurred next shocked the world and affected countless lives - and continue to do so, 10 years on. On that fateful morning, the small city nestled in the Perthshire Highlands was irrevocably thrust on to the world stage when Hamilton barged into Dunblane Primary School and shot 16 five- to six-year-old children and their teacher before killing himself.
'We heard these gunshots from the gym and looked round and thought he must be firing at a target or something; then he came out through a fire exit and started firing at [us] and we were all petrified,' one pupil said afterwards.
The British prime minister at the time, John Major, described the massacre as 'a horror of almost unimaginable proportions'. The leaders of Ireland and France, among other countries, expressed their outrage at the wanton act of brutality.
Author Rachael Bell in an article for the Crime Library recalled that Hamilton first shot at several of the teachers: 'Hamilton then turned his guns on the frightened children and shot at them as they tried to scramble to safety under chairs and inside closets. Screams echoed throughout the gymnasium as tiny bodies sunk to the floor in pools of blood.'
Hamilton fired the guns in quick succession then walked to a nearby corridor where he fired off more rounds before returning to the gym. There, he placed the barrel of a revolver in his mouth and pulled the trigger.