COPENHAGEN, Denmark — A gunman who killed three people when he opened fire in a crowded shopping mall acted alone and apparently chose his victims at random, Danish police said Monday, all but ruling out the attack as “an act of terrorism “.
Authorities have filed preliminary charges of murder and attempted murder against a 22-year-old Dane man who will be held for 24 days in a secure psychiatric facility while authorities investigate the crime, prosecutor Sren Harbo told reporters. Police said the man was known to mental health services, without providing details.
Police have not identified a motive for Sunday’s attack at one of Scandinavia’s largest shopping centers. The suspect, who was carrying a rifle and a knife, was quickly arrested, and Copenhagen Police Chief Inspector Sren Thomassen said the man also had access to another gun. He said the firearms were obtained illegally, but gave no further details.
“It was the worst possible nightmare,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Monday, calling the attack “unusually brutal.”
The three killed were a 17-year-old boy and a 17-year-old girl, both Danes, and a 47-year-old Russian, according to Thomassen. Four other people were hospitalized with gunshot wounds and are in critical but stable condition. A total of 30 people were injured, most in the panicked stampede after the shots were fired at the Field shopping center on the outskirts of the Danish capital.
Gun violence is relatively rare in Denmark. The last shooting of this magnitude 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 people dead and five police officers injured.
The suspect, who cannot be named under a court order, appeared before a judge Monday in a packed courtroom to face three preliminary counts of murder and four counts of attempted murder. It’s a step short of formal charges, but it allows authorities to keep a person in custody while an investigation takes place.
The judge asked the media to leave and held the detention hearing behind closed doors. It was not clear how the suspect confessed. He will remain in custody until July 28, the police said.
Thomassen said police have no indication that anyone helped the man.
“There is nothing in our investigation, nor in the documents that we have reviewed, nor in the things that we have found, nor in the witness statements that we have obtained, that proves that this was an act of terrorism,” said Thomassen, who previously identified a man as “ethnic Dane”, a phrase usually used to mean someone is white.
Danish broadcaster TV2 released a grainy photo of the suspected 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 looked very violent and angry,” eyewitness Mahdi Al-Wazni told TV2. “He talked to me and said (the rifle) wasn’t real while I was taking pictures of him. He seemed very proud of what he was doing.”
Pictures from the scene showed people running from the shopping center where people laid flowers on Monday.
Chassandra Stoltz, an 18-year-old student who was on her way to a Harry Styles concert scheduled for Sunday night nearby, described a stampede when shots rang out. At first she, her sister, and her father thought it was because someone had spotted Stiles, but soon realized the panic, including a man grabbing his child from a stroller in the chaos.
“People were leading us to the exit sign and we ran up on the roof and stayed there for a while and then people were panicking everywhere and people were crying,” Stoltz said.
Styles’ concert was canceled because of the shooting.
Sunday’s attack came about a week after a shooting in neighboring Norway, where police said a Norwegian of Iranian descent opened fire at an LGBTQ festival, killing two and wounding more than 20.
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Ritter reported from Unterseen, Switzerland.
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