A 22-year-old Dane was arrested, Copenhagen police inspector Søren Thomassen told reporters, adding that there was no indication that anyone else was involved in the attack, although police were continuing to investigate. Gun violence is relatively rare in Denmark. Thomassen said it was too early to speculate on a motive for the shooting, which happened late in the afternoon at Field’s, one of the largest shopping centers in Scandinavia and located on the outskirts of the Danish capital. When the shots rang out, some people hid in shops while others fled in a panicked stampede, witnesses said. “It’s pure terror. This is awful,” said Hans Christian Stolz, a 53-year-old IT consultant who was bringing his daughters to see Harry Styles perform at a concert scheduled for Sunday night near the mall. “You might wonder how a person could do this to another human being, but it’s beyond… beyond anything possible.” Thomassen did not give a specific number of casualties other than that many people were dead and several wounded. He said the suspect was an “ethnic Dane,” a phrase commonly used to mean someone is white. Danish broadcaster TV2 released a grainy photo of the alleged gunman, a man wearing knee-length shorts and a tank top 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 (the rifle) is not real as I was filming him. He seemed very proud of what he was doing.” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said the Nordic country had been hit by a “severe attack”. “It is incomprehensible. Heartbreaking. Pointless,” he said. “Our beautiful and usually so safe capital changed in a split second.” Images from the scene showed people running out of the mall and TV2 published a photo of a man being put on a stretcher. After the shooting, a huge contingent of heavily armed police patrolled the area, with several fire engines also parked outside the mall. Laurich Hermansen told Danish broadcaster DR that he was in a clothes shop in the shopping center with his family when he heard “three, four bangs. Really strong bangs. It sounded like the shots were being fired right next to the store.” The 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. Organizers canceled Harry Styles’ concert, which was scheduled to take place at the nearby Royal Arena, at the behest of the police. On Snapchat, Styles wrote: “My team and I are praying for everyone involved in the Copenhagen mall shooting. I’m shocked. Love H.” The royal palace said a reception for Crown Prince Frederik linked to the Tour de France cycling race was cancelled. The first three stages of the race were held this year in Denmark. The reception was to be held on the royal yacht moored in Soenderborg, the town where the third stage ended. In a joint statement, Queen Margrethe, her son Crown Prince Frederik and his wife Crown Princess Mary said: “We do not yet know the full extent of the tragedy, but it is already clear that more people have lost their lives and that even more were injured.” “The situation calls for unity and care,” they said in a statement. 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. Although the death toll in Copenhagen on Sunday was not clear, it appeared to be the worst gun attack in Denmark since February 2015, when a 22-year-old man was killed in a shootout with police following a shooting in the capital. which left two dead and five police officers injured.
Ritter reported from Unterseen, Switzerland.
