#Police #suspect #Copenhagen #mall #shooting #mental #history
Danish police said on Monday the suspect in a weekend shooting at a Copenhagen shopping center that killed three people, including two teenagers, was known to psychiatric services.
“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 there appeared to have been preparations for the attack and that no one else had supported it.
“As of today, he apparently acted alone,” he said of the 22-year-old suspect.
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.
About 20 others were slightly injured in the panicked evacuation after the shooting.
The area around the busy mall was quiet on Monday morning.
In front of the main entrance, behind a security barrier guarded by numerous police officers, it was mainly journalists who stayed, according to an AFP correspondent on site.
The police confirmed that the suspected shooter was known to the police, “but only marginally”.
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”.
Three videos believed to have been posted by the suspect on YouTube were all captioned “I don’t care.”
YouTube and Instagram accounts believed to belong to him were shut down overnight, AFP noted.
– ‘Everything OK?’ –
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 mall was busy with a planned concert featuring British artist Harry Styles at the nearby Royal Arena, which had sold 13,500 tickets but was canceled at the last minute.
“We dressed for the concert while we were out,” Maria Enevoldsen, who returned to the mall to pick up her car on Monday, told AFP.
“Our friend[at the mall]called and said, ‘Are you okay?’ and then we heard gunshots on the phone,” 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.
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