Police in Copenhagen, Denmark, say they do not currently believe a mass shooting at Field’s shopping mall was terror-related, and that the suspect had mental health issues.
“Our suspect is also known among psychiatric services, beyond that I do not wish to comment,” Copenhagen police chief Soren Thomassen told reporters at a Monday morning press briefing, in comments quoted by AFP.
“Our assessment is that the victims were random, that it isn’t motivated by gender or something else,” the Scandinavian police chief added, appearing to rule out the possibility that the suspect, said to be a 22-year-old ethnic Dane, was an incel killer.
Police have admitted that the suspect, who carried out his attack armed with a rifle and handgun for which he did not have a licence as well as a knife, was previously known to law enforcement “but only peripherally”.
They also say it “seems he was acting alone.”
Police monitor the area outside the Fields shopping mall, where a gunman killed three people and wounded several others in Copenhagen on July 3, 2022. – A 22-year-old Danish man was arrested after the shooting but his motives were unclear, police said. (Photo by OLAFUR STEINAR GESTSSON/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images)
More details of the victims of the shooting have now been disclosed, with the three confirmed fatalities being comprised of two 17-year-olds, one male and one female, and a 47-year-old Russian man who had Danish residency.
Another four people are confirmed two have been wounded, with one in critical condition and the others said to be stable.
The four have been identified as two Danish women aged 19 and 40 and two Swedes, one a 16-year-old girl and the other a 50-year-old man.
“Our beautiful and usually so safe capital was changed in a split second,” said Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen of the “cruel attack”.
Police monitor the area outside the Fields shopping mall, where a gunman killed three people and wounded several others in Copenhagen on July 3, 2022. – A 22-year-old Danish man was arrested after the shooting but his motives were unclear, police said. (Photo by OLAFUR STEINAR GESTSSON/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images)
This story is developing…