Swedish police detain 16-year old murder suspect after Uppsala shootings
International news via Reuters:
Three people were killed in a shooting in the Swedish city of Uppsala on Tuesday and a murder investigation has been launched, police said.
Police said it was investigating the shooting as a homicide and that it had no information about the incident being a terror or hate crime at this point.
“We have information that a person left the scene on an electric scooter,” a police spokesperson told Reuters. “Whether this person is a perpetrator or a witness, or someone who has some connection to the incident, it is unclear at this time.”
Police said the victims were yet to be identified and declined to speculate on the motive for the killings.
Electric scooters have been used several times as a mode of escape after gang conflict shootings in Sweden. Uppsala, some 40 minutes north of the capital, Stockholm, by car, has seen many gang-related shootings in the past decade, but usually outside the city centre.
Swedish Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer said the Justice Ministry was in close contact with the police and that it was closely monitoring developments in the case.
“A brutal act of violence has occurred in central Uppsala … This is at the same time as the whole of Uppsala has begun Walpurgis Night. What has happened is extremely serious,” Strommer said in a statement.
Police said earlier they had received calls from members of the public who heard gunshots in the city centre, and that emergency services had rushed to the scene.
“Three people are confirmed dead after a shooting … The police are investigating the incident as a homicide,” investigators said in a statement.
Witnesses told SVT they had heard five shots and had seen people in the area running to take cover. Several Swedish media, including TT, reported that the shooting took place near or in a hair salon.
A 16-year-old person was detained early on Wednesday on suspicion of murdering three people in a hair salon in the Swedish city of Uppsala, Swedish prosecutors said.
Three people were shot dead late on Tuesday afternoon just as Uppsala, a university town some 40 minutes north of Stockholm, was gearing up for Walpurgis Night, one of the busiest holidays in the city.
The Swedish Prosecution Authority said a 16-year old was detained on suspicion of murder, on the highest level of suspicion in the Swedish legal system.
“An intensive investigation is underway. We are now gathering information and the police are conducting door-to-door inquiries and interviewing witnesses,” the authority said in a statement. “In addition, mobile phones and other material that has been seized are being analysed.”
Police told a news conference that it was too early to say if the shooting was gang related, but that it was one of the theories they were pursuing “particularly intensively.”
Sweden has suffered from a wave of gang-related violence for more than a decade that has included an epidemic of gun violence.
Court documents, heavily redacted due to the suspect’s young age, showed a person had been arrested on Wednesday, just after midnight. The court-appointed lawyer for the suspect did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Police said the incident was believed to be “an isolated event” and not linked to the extensive celebrations expected for Walpurgis Night, a festive occasion where families and students gather around bonfires to celebrate spring.
Ten people were killed in February in the Swedish city of Orebro in the country’s deadliest ever mass shooting, in which a 35-year-old unemployed loner opened fire on students and teachers at an adult education centre.
Sweden has suffered from a wave of gang-related violence for more than a decade that has included an epidemic of gun violence.
The Nordic country’s right-wing minority government came to power in 2022 on a promise to tackle gang-related violence. It has tightened laws and given more powers to police, and after the Orebro shooting said it would seek to tighten gun laws.
Reporting by Louise Breusch Rasmussen and Stine Jacobsen in Copenhagen, Johan Ahlander, Marie Mannes, Simon Johnson and Niklas Pollard in Stockholm and Philip O’Connor in Uppsala, editing by Terje Solsvik, Gareth Jones and Sandra Maler
