COPENHAGEN, Denmark – An armed man opened fire in a lively shopping center in the Danish capital on Sunday and killed three people and seriously injured three others, police say.
A 22-year-old Danish man was arrested after the shooting, Copenhagen police inspector Søren Thomassen told reporters and added that there were no signs that anyone else was involved in the attack, even though the police are still investigating.
Violent violence is relatively uncommon in Denmark.
Thomassen said it was too early to speculate on the motive for the shooting, which took place 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 were heard, some people hid in shops while others fled in panic, according to witnesses.
“It’s pure terror. This is awful,” said Hans Christian Stoltz, a 53-year-old IT consultant who took his daughters to see Harry Styles perform at a concert scheduled for Sunday night near the mall. “You may be wondering how one person can do this to another human being, but it’s beyond … beyond anything possible.”
Thomassen said the victims included a man in his 40s and two “young people” without giving any details. Several others were injured, three of them seriously, he said.
He said police received the first reports of a shooting at 5.37pm and arrested the suspect 11 minutes later. Thomassen described the suspect as an “ethnic Dane”, a phrase commonly used to mean that someone is white.
Danish TV2 published a grainy photo of the alleged armed man, a man wearing knee-length shorts, a vest or sleeveless shirt and holding what appeared to be a rifle in his right hand. – He seemed very violent and angry, says eyewitness Mahdi Al-Wazni to TV2. “He talked to me and said that (the rifle) is not true when I filmed him. He seemed very proud of what he did.”
The Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said that the Scandinavian country had been hit by a “cruel attack”.
“It’s incomprehensible. Heartbreaking. Meaningless,” she said. “Our beautiful and usually so safe capital changed in a fraction of a second.”
Pictures from the place showed people running out of the shopping center and TV2 posted a picture of a man who was laid on a stretcher. After the shooting, a huge group of heavily armed police patrolled the area, with several fire trucks parked outside the mall.
Laurits Hermansen told the Danish TV channel DR that he was in a clothing store at the mall with his family when he heard “three, four bangs. Really loud bangs. It sounded like the shots were fired right next to the store.”
The shopping center is located on the outskirts of Copenhagen, opposite a metro station for a line connecting the city center with the international airport. A large motorway also runs adjacent to the mall.
The organizers canceled the Harry Styles concert, which had been planned at the nearby Royal Arena, on the orders of police.
On Snapchat, Styles wrote: “My team and I pray for everyone involved in the mall’s shooting in Copenhagen. I’m shocked. Love H.”
The Royal Palace said that a reception with Crown Prince Frederik linked to the Tour de France cycling race had been canceled. The first three stages of the race were held in Denmark this year. The reception was to be held on the royal yacht moored in Sönderborg, the city 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 have been injured.”
“The situation requires unity and care,” they said in a statement.
The shooting came a week after a mass shooting in neighboring Norway, where police said that a Norwegian man of Iranian origin opened fire during an LGBTQ festival and killed two and injured more than 20.
It was the worst gun attack in Denmark since February 2015, when a 22-year-old man was killed in a shooting with the police after going on a shooting trip in the capital that killed two people and injured five policemen.
Source: sn.dk