Vladislav Roslyakov, the student who attacked the Kerch Polytechnic College, had been popular with girls but avoided being around them, his former classmate and best friend who chose to remain anonymous told the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper. Roslyakov must have had some insecurities, the kid said.
“For some reason, Vlad didn’t want to talk to girls at all, he even avoided them. I remember one night he and I went to the beach to have a swim. Three girls invited us for a walk later. I said yes. Vlad’s reaction surprised me, he said no way he would go with the girls. So we said no. It happened a lot with Vlad,” said the shooter’s classmate.
Roslyakov’s friend added that he was “sport-obsessed”. He made friends with athletes who were much older than him, about 20 or 22 years old at that time; they practiced together. Eventually, Roslyakov had to quit sports over health issues.
According to Roslyakov’s friend, the kid had spent a lot of time with his mother.
Her son was practically the only person she talked to. “She didn’t have any friends; no relatives either. She was divorced, so she had nobody to talk to except her son. Vlad understood that and tried to spend more time with his mother,” the kid said. Roslyakov and his mother went to Jehovah’s Witnesses conventions, although his friend assured there was no way the organization could have shaped his outlook. “Vlad and I were making fun of them, he made a lot of jokes about the ‘witnesses’,” he told MK.
The young man also noted that there was nothing suspicious about Roslyakov’s behavior at school. A year ago, the kid saw that his former classmate had been posting swastikas and weapons on social media, as well as some “strange quotes”. He stopped visiting Roslyakov’s profile after that.
Roslyakov kept a low profile in the past two years. “He did not go to cafes, was not seen at the movies either. No one saw him. Last year, our mutual friend ran into him at a bus stop. He was going to approach him, but Roslyakov pretended he didn’t know the guy. He just turned away. He was in his head and clearly did not want to talk to him,” the friend said. According to the kid, it was then that Roslyakov became interested in the Columbine Shooting. He would not stop talking about it, which drove his friends away eventually.
One of Roslyakov’s college classmates noted that the young man had often been made to sit in the “chair of shame” - the college director punished students this way. She told the students’ parents about the chair. One of the college graduates said that none of the students took the punishment seriously or thought of it as humiliation.
