The internet bred murderous intent and transformed it into a real-world shooting.
Videos and images regarding the incident on September 18, 2026, at Banga National High School in South Cotabato, Philippines, where a 16-year-old male student opened fire with a handgun. Two students—a 14-year-old boy and a girl—were killed and eight others injured; the perpetrator also died after shooting himself (includes the perpetrator’s manifesto with Japanese translation).
The suspect told his friends to go home, stating, “I’m going to carry out the plan after lunch.” Immediately afterward, he indiscriminately opened fire on his classmates with a 9mm automatic pistol, killing and injuring them.
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01/Perpetrator: A 9th-grade male student at the school
02/Perpetrator: 16 years old, died by suicide at the scene
03/Victim: 14-year-old female student
04/Victim: 14-year-old male student
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07/Gun used in the crime
08/The following text is said to be the perpetrator’s manifesto and is translated into Japanese
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The Common Factor in Philippine School Shootings: “A Family Member’s Gun”
While school shootings were previously considered rare in the Philippines, the situation has begun to shift in 2026. At least three such incidents have reportedly occurred within a span of just a few months: in Tacloban in June, at Ateneo de Zamboanga University in August, and most recently in Banga, South Cotabato. A common thread among these cases is that the firearms used by the perpetrators belonged to their families. Reports indicate that the weapon used in the Banga incident was a registered firearm belonging to the perpetrator’s father—an employee in the Department of Education’s disaster risk reduction division—while the Zamboanga incident involved a government-issued firearm belonging to the perpetrator’s father, a customs official.
Although the Philippines has a gun control law in place (Republic Act 10591, enacted in 2013), experts point to lax enforcement, noting the reality that firearms remain accessible even within the households of civil servants and law enforcement personnel. The Department of the Interior and Local Government suggested that the suspect in the recent case may have been influenced by content found on the “deep/dark web.” In Western nations, there exists an online subculture known as the “True Crime Community” (TCC)—characterized by the worship and imitation of mass murderers—which is said to have originated from a trend of idolizing the perpetrators of the Columbine High School massacre. Confusion regarding the acronym “TCC” in online comment sections suggests that awareness of this subculture remains low.
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