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According to Danish police, the suspect in a weekend shooting at a Copenhagen mall that killed three people, including two teenagers, was known to mental health treatment. “Our suspect is also known among psychiatric services,” Copenhagen police chief Soren Thomassen said during a press conference. According to Thomassen, the victims emerged to have been targeted at random, and there was no evidence that it was a terror attack.
“Our analysis is that the victims were chosen at random, and that it is not motivated by gender or anything else,” Thomassen said.
The police chief would not speculate on a motive, but he did say that there appeared to be preparation prior to the incident and that the 22-year-old suspect was not aided.
“As things stand, he appears to have been acting alone,” he said.
The three victims have been identified as a 17-year-old Danish girl and boy, as well as a 47-year-old Russian citizen living in Denmark.
Two Danish women, aged 19 and 40, and two Swedish citizens, a 50-year-old man and a 16-year-old woman, were also injured in the shooting.
The suspected shooter was prevalent at the mall at the time of the shooting, according to police, and is known to them “but only peripherally.”
They also stated that they believe the videos of the suspect that have been circulating on social media since Sunday evening are genuine.
According to AFP, the suspect’s YouTube and Instagram accounts were closed overnight.
The shooting happened on Sunday afternoon there at busy Fields shopping mall, which is located between Copenhagen’s city centre and the airport.
The shooter was armed with a rifle, a pistol, and a knife, according to police, and while the weapons were not thought to be illegal, the suspect did not have a licence for them.
According to witnesses interviewed by the Danish media, the suspect tried to trick people into approaching him by claiming his weapon was fake.
“He was sufficiently psychopathic to go out and hunt people,” one witness told public broadcaster DR.
