Copenhagen shooting suspect had mental health issues: police

Danish police said on Monday that the suspect was known to psychiatric services in a weekend shooting at a shopping center in Copenhagen that killed three people, including two teenagers.

“Our suspect is also known under psychiatric services, beyond that I do not want to comment,” Copenhagen police chief Soren Thomassen said at a press conference.

Thomassen added that the victims appeared to have been attacked indiscriminately and there was nothing to indicate it was an act of terrorism.

“Our assessment is that the victims were random, it’s not motivated by gender or anything else,” Thomassen said.

The police chief has yet to comment on a motive but said the attack appeared to have been prepared and that the 22-year-old suspect had no one else to assist him.

“As things stand, he appears to have acted alone,” he said.

The three people killed were identified as a Danish girl and a teenage boy, both aged 17, and a 47-year-old Russian national residing in Denmark.

Four others were injured in the shooting: two Danish women, aged 19 and 40, and two Swedish nationals, a 50-year-old man and a 16-year-old woman.

Police confirmed the suspected shooter was present at the mall at the time of the shooting and is “only marginally known” to police.

They added that they believe videos of the suspect that have been circulating on social media since Sunday evening are authentic.

In some pictures, the young man can be seen with weapons, imitating suicidal gestures and talking about psychotropic drugs “that don’t work”.

YouTube and Instagram accounts believed to belong to the suspect were shut down overnight, AFP noted.

The shooting took place in the busy Fields shopping center between the city center and Copenhagen Airport on Sunday afternoon.

According to police, the shooter was armed with a rifle, pistol and knife, and while the weapons were not believed to be illegal, the suspect did not have a license to use them.

Witnesses cited by the Danish media described how the suspect tried to deceive people by saying his gun was fake to trick them into approaching.

“He was psychopathic enough to go and chase people, but he wasn’t running,” a witness told public broadcaster DR.

Other eyewitnesses told Danish media they saw more than 100 people rushing to the exit of the mall when the first shots rang out.

Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen condemned the “cruel attack” in a statement late Sunday.

“Our beautiful and usually so safe capital has been transformed in a split second,” she said.

The shooting came just over a week after a gunman opened fire near a gay bar in Oslo, neighboring Norway, killing two people and wounding 21 others.

In February 2015, two people were killed and five injured in a series of Islamist-motivated shootings in Copenhagen.