Police have not identified a motive for Sunday’s attack at one of Scandinavia’s largest shopping centers. A suspect carrying a rifle and knife was quickly apprehended and Copenhagen Police Chief Insp. Soren Thomassen said the 22-year-old Dane also had access to another weapon. He said the firearms were illegally obtained and that the suspect was known to mental health services, but did not elaborate on either. “It was the worst possible nightmare,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Monday, calling the attack “unusually brutal.”
30 people were injured, most of them in a panic attack
The three dead were a 17-year-old boy and a 17-year-old girl, both Danish, and a 47-year-old Russian man, according to Thomassen. Four other people were treated for gunshot wounds and were in critical but stable condition. In all, 30 people were injured, most of them in the panicked stampede after the shootings at Field’s shopping center on the outskirts of the Danish capital. The last shooting of this scale was in February 2015, when a 22-year-old man was killed in a shootout with police following an attack in the capital that left two dead and five police officers injured. The suspect arrived for a hearing in a packed courtroom, where he is expected to be arraigned on three preliminary charges of murder and four of attempted murder, according to Danish media. Preliminary charges are a far cry from filing formal charges, but they allow authorities to keep a suspect in custody during an investigation. He cannot be named under a court order, media reported. Women hug each other outside Copenhagen’s Field shopping mall, where a gunman killed three people and wounded several others. Police say they do not believe the shooting is terrorism-related. (Olafur Steinar Gestsson/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP/Getty Images) Thomassen said police had no indication that anyone helped the gunman and his motive remains unclear. “There is nothing in our investigation, or the documents that we’ve reviewed, or the things that we’ve found, or the witness statements that we’ve taken, that can establish that this is an act of terrorism,” said Thomassen, who previously identified the suspect as “national Dane”, a phrase commonly used to mean that someone is white.
“He seemed very violent and angry”
Danish broadcaster TV2 released a grainy photo of the alleged gunman, a man wearing knee-length shorts, a vest or sleeveless shirt and holding a rifle in his right hand. “He looked very violent and angry,” eyewitness Mahdi Al-Wazni told TV2. “He spoke to me and said so [the rifle] it’s not real as i was filming him. He seemed very proud of what he was doing.” Images from the scene showed people running outside the mall, where people laid flowers on Monday. Flowers and candles are seen Monday near the scene of the shooting. (Thibault Savary/AFP/Getty Images) Chassandra Stoltz, an 18-year-old student on her way to a Harry Styles concert scheduled for Sunday night nearby, described an outburst as the gunshots rang out. At first, she and her sister and father thought it was because someone had spotted Styles – but she soon realized the panic, including a man grabbing his child from a pram in the chaos. “People were guiding us to the exit sign and we ran up to the roof and stayed there for a while and then people were panicking everywhere and people were crying,” Stoltz said. Styles concert canceled due to filming.
“I’m shocked,” says music star Harry Styles
On Snapchat, Styles wrote: “My team and I are praying for everyone involved in the Copenhagen mall shooting. I’m shocked. Love H.” The high-rise Field’s shopping center is located on the outskirts of Copenhagen directly opposite a metro station for a line connecting the city center to the international airport. A major highway is also adjacent to the mall. The shootings came a week after a mass shooting in neighboring Norway, where police said a Norwegian of Iranian descent opened fire during an LGBTQ festival, killing two and injuring more than 20.
