A woman and her young child were shot at a playground in the city of Eskilstuna on Friday evening amid a surge in Swedish gun violence this year.
The shooting took place in the Årby area of the city at around 7 p.m. on Friday evening and saw a woman, along with her small child, shot at the scene and taken to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, according to local police.
“It is a woman and a younger child who are injured,” police spokesman Johnny Gustavsson told broadcaster SVT. “We are now collecting witness information and obtaining the specialist skills we have available.”
According to SVT, there were many people at the scene when the shooting took place, with one witness claiming to be speechless, saying: “I don’t know what to say, I’m so scared,” and adding that several of the people connected to the shooting were wearing masks at the time.
“The person or people who have done this have shown a total indifference to the lives of others,” police spokesman Gustavsson said.
“Eskilstuna has been a place where there has been pronounced violence between different groups that do not appreciate each other’s presence. It’s been bloody, to say the least.”
A report from the newspaper Aftonbladet, however, claims that police were alerted to the possibility of a shooting in the city the day prior to it occurring.
“The police knew that there was a risk of shooting and looked at, among other things, the resource issue and how to organize themselves by preparing with more police officers,” a source told the newspaper.
Christoffer Bohman, head of the investigation section in Södermanland county, confirmed officials had a prior warning, saying: “It’s true that we had a notification that came in last Thursday night and that was handled by assessing it on Friday during the day in the order that we always work in.”
“It did not differ from the intelligence of exactly the same nature that comes in several times a week… it was rather vague and unspecified. We assessed that the threat did not increase,” he said.
The shooting is not the first time a child has been caught up in gun violence in Sweden. In 2020, a 12-year-old girl was shot and killed in the crossfire of a shooting outside a local McDonald’s restaurant in Botkyrka in what was believed to have been gang-related violence.
Shootings in Sweden, particularly fatal shootings, have surged this year, with the previous yearly record of 47 fatal shootings matched earlier this week.