Danish police believe that a shooting at a shopping mall that left three people dead and four others seriously wounded was not related to terrorism. They said on Monday that the gunman appeared to have selected his victims at random.
Copenhagen's chief police inspector, Sren Thomassen, said the victims were a 17-year-old boy and a 17-year-old girl, both Danes, and a 47-year-old Russian man were killed when the gunman opened fire on Sunday afternoon in Field's shopping mall, one of Scandinavia's biggest.
Four other people, two Danish and two Swedish citizens, were treated for gunshot wounds and were in a critical but stable condition, Thomassen said. Several other people received minor injuries as they fled the mall.
Thomassen said police had no indication that anyone helped the gunman, identified as a 22-year-old Dane. He said the motive was unclear but there was nothing indicating terrorism, and the suspect would be arraigned later on Monday on preliminary murder charges.
He said there was no evidence in our investigation, or the documents we have reviewed or the witnesses we have found that this is an act of terrorism.
He confirmed that the suspect was known to mental health services, but provided no further information.
The Danish broadcaster TV 2 published a grainy picture of the alleged gunman, a man wearing knee-length shorts, a vest or sleeveless shirt, and holding what appeared to be a rifle in his right hand.
He appeared to be very violent and angry, a witness, Mahdi al-Wazni, told TV 2. He spoke to me and said the rifle isn't real as I was filming him. He seemed proud of what he was doing. Thomassen said that he has had access to a gun and that he carried a knife, and that he also had access to a gun. Images from the scene showed people running out of the mall in panic. After the shooting, a large contingent of heavily armed police officers patrolled the area, and several fire department vehicles were parked outside the mall.
It is pure terror. Hans Christian Stoltz, a 53-year-old IT consultant who was bringing his daughters to see Harry Styles perform in a concert scheduled for Sunday night near the mall, said this is awful. You may wonder how a person can do this to another human being, but it is beyond anything that is possible. The concert was cancelled after the shooting. Styles wrote on Snapchat: My team and I pray for everyone involved in the Copenhagen shopping mall shooting. I am shocked. Love H. It was the worst gun attack in Denmark since February 2015 when a 22-year-old man was killed in a shoot-out with police after he went on a shooting spree in the capital, which left two people dead and five police officers wounded. The attack was believed to have been motivated by Islamic extremism.
The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, called Sunday s shooting a cruel attack. She said: It is incomprehensible. Our beautiful and usually so safe capital was changed in a split second. The Field's shopping centre is located on the outskirts of Copenhagen, just across the street from a subway station for a line connecting the city centre with the international airport. The mall is located on a main road.
The attack came a week after a mass shooting in neighbouring Norway in which police said a Norwegian man of Iranian origin opened fire during a LGBTQ festival, killing two people and wounding more than 20.