A woman in the multicultural Swedish city of Malmö is suspected of attempted murder after allegedly trying to push a wheelchair-bound man into a canal in an unprovoked attack.
The 25-year-old woman had approached the man in his 40s on Monday afternoon and tried to push him into the canal but was stopped by several passersby. The witnesses also detained the woman until police arrived on the scene to take her into custody.
It is believed that the woman did not know her victim prior to the attack, with investigators also stating the pair had not had any sort of altercation beforehand. Police are now investigating the random act of violence as attempted murder, broadcaster SVT reports.
Prosecutor Christoffer Östlind commented on the incident, saying: “The man is in a wheelchair. If he had ended up in the water, he would have had tremendous difficulty getting out.”
“The picture we have so far is that this appears to be unprovoked,” Östlind added.
The random act of violence is just one of many violent incidents which have taken place in Malmö in recent years, many of them linked to gang crime.
Bombings in the city had also become such a problem in the last several years that police instructed the public in 2019 to be on guard for encountering explosive devices.
“We want to alert people to be a little more cautious. If you see something strange, a bag or a package… A bomb can look like anything,” police officer Göran Holmgren said in September of that year.
While 2020 saw a record number of fatal shootings in 2020, many of them linked to gangs, Malmö has seen a decrease in gang activity. The decline was largely credited to the imprisonment of many of the city’s gang leaders after a widely-used encryption app had been deciphered last year.