Shooting in Copenhagen: what we know about the attack that killed at least three people in a shopping center in the Danish capital – franceinfo

The country had not experienced such a tragedy since 2015. Barely out of the fervor of the Tour de France, Denmark is bereaved after a shooting that left three dead and four seriously injured in a shopping center in the capital, Copenhagen, Sunday July 3. The police are now studying the motives of the main suspect, a young Dane arrested without violence and who suffers from “psychiatric history”. Here is what we know after this attack. Three dead and four seriously injured in a shopping center Copenhagen police received the first reports of a shooting on Sunday around 5:30 p.m., according to Chief Inspector Soren Thomassen. Shots rang out in Field’s shopping mall, one of the largest in all of Scandinavia, located between the Danish capital’s city center and the airport. The first shots caused panic. Amateur videos show visitors rushing outside the mall, while others were forced to hide in shops. “We were about to order food, then we heard gunshots,” a witness told franceinfo. “I told my daughter who was sitting down to lie on the ground, then we rushed into the toilet for the disabled”, says the survivor, who adds: “We closed the door, and we stayed there maybe an hour and a half.” Witnesses tell Danish media that the suspect tried to trick victims, for example by saying that his weapon was fake to entice them to get closer. The shooting left three people dead: a 17-year-old Danish boy and girl, as well as a 47-year-old Russian who lived in Denmark, police said Monday. The attack also left four seriously injured: two Danes aged 19 and 40, a 50-year-old Swede and a 16-year-old Swedish woman. The chief inspector added that other people had been slightly injured in the panic movement, without specifying their number. A crisis cell and a psychological care center have been set up, said the mayor of Copenhagen, Sophie Haestorp Andersen. A large police force was deployed at the scene of the shootings and in several places in the capital. 22-year-old Dane ‘known for a psychiatric history’ arrested The main suspect was arrested without violence at 5:48 p.m., after police arrived outside the shopping center. It is a 22 year old young man whose name has not been made public. He was known to the police “but only peripherally”. “We are convinced that the man we arrested is responsible,” said Soren Thomassen, adding that “he had in his possession a rifle and ammunition for this rifle on him”, according to Danish television TV2. He must be indicted for murder and questioned Monday by the Copenhagen police to clarify certain points. According to the investigators, “nothing indicates that he had complicity” or “that it was a terrorist act”. The police assured that the author was “known for a psychiatric history”. She confirmed the authenticity of videos that have been circulating since Sunday evening on social networks, in which the suspect appears with weapons, mimes suicide gestures or evokes treatment with a powerful drug, prescribed in psychiatry, “which does not work “. The suspect acted alone and chose his victims “at random”, said the local police chief. Danish Prime Minister denounces “incomprehensible” and “senseless” act Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has denounced a “cruel attack” targeting “innocent families out to shop or eat. Children, young people and adults. ” “We were all brutally ripped from the joyful summer we had just begun,” the manager wrote in a statement, lamenting an “incomprehensible. Heartbreaking. Senseless” act. The Danish royal family also issued a statement in which they send their “thoughts and most sincere condolences” to all those affected, and call for “unity”. For his part, the organizer of the Tour de France (ASO) said he was “particularly shocked and saddened by the tragedy which has just struck Copenhagen”, while the Grande Boucle, which started from the Danish capital on Friday, played its third and final stage in the country on Sunday. ASO underlines in a short text that the inhabitants of Copenhagen “had reserved for the runners one of the most fantastic receptions in history”. Riders also expressed themselves individually, such as the German John Degenkolb or the Canadian Michael Woods. Singer Harry Styles, who was to give a concert on Sunday evening at the Royal Arena in Copenhagen, less than a kilometer from the shopping center where the facts took place, finally canceled his performance. “I am heartbroken,” tweeted the British artist, “devastated for the victims, their families and all who suffer”. Shootings are rare in Denmark: the number of gun deaths in the country was just over one person per 100,000 people in 2018, according to the University of Sydney, compared to 2.42 per 100,000 people in France in 2016, for example. The Danish capital had not seen a shooting since the Islamist-motivated attacks of February 14 and 15, 2015, which also killed three people.