Denmark: Investigation into gunman’s attack focuses on his mental state

LAST UPDATE: 12.19

The investigation into the bloody attack launched by a gunman in a Copenhagen shopping center that killed three people and seriously injured four is focusing on the mental state of the 22-year-old Dane, who was arrested as a suspect and who had posted videos before his act in which he appeared with weapons and mimicked suicidal gestures.

The suspect was known to the country’s psychiatric authorities and was in possession of a rifle, ammunition and a knife when he was arrested.

According to police, although the weapons are not believed to be illegal, the suspect does not have a gun permit.

“There was some kind of thought and preparation (by the suspect) leading up to this horrible act,” Copenhagen police chief Zoren Thomassen told a news conference without giving details of the suspect’s possible motives as it is too early to say so.

“Our assessment is that the victims were chosen at random, that (the attack) was not motivated by gender or anything else,” Thomassen said.

Thomasen added that the attacker killed two 17-year-olds – a man and a woman – and a 47-year-old Russian, who was a permanent resident of Denmark.

The four injured are hospitalized in critical but stable condition. Two of them are Swedish citizens — a 50-year-old and a 16-year-old — and the other two are 19-year-old Danes.

Thomasen is unable to say whether the Swedes are Danish residents or tourists.

A number of people were slightly injured trying to leave the scene of the attack, but not by bullets, police said.

The 22-year-old Dane, who was taken into custody shortly after the attack, chose his victims “at random” and police said the attack was not terror-related and the suspect was not believed to have had accomplices.

Eyewitnesses described to Danish media that the suspect tried to trick those in the mall into approaching him by telling them his gun was fake.

“He had enough psychopathic behavior to chase people, but he wasn’t running,” an eyewitness told public broadcaster DR.

Other eyewitnesses told Danish media that they saw more than 100 people running towards the exit of the mall when the first shots started.

Police believe the videos circulating on social media since yesterday are authentic and show the attacker posing with weapons and mimicking suicidal gestures or talking about a treatment with a powerful psychiatric prescription drug that “doesn’t work”.

His YouTube and Instagram accounts were shut down overnight, according to AFP.

Several Danish media have confirmed the identity of the suspect who was released online, but his name has not been released.

The attack took place at the Fields shopping centre, located in the Amager district about halfway from the center of the Danish capital to its airport.

The Prime Minister of the country, Mette Frederiksen, condemned the “barbaric attack” in her announcement yesterday.

“Our beautiful and usually safe capital changed in a split second,” he said.

The attack came just a week after a gunman attacked a gay bar in Oslo in neighboring Norway, killing two people and injuring 21.

In February 2015 two people were killed and five injured in Copenhagen in a series of Islamist-motivated attacks.

Queen Margrethe II of Denmark and foreign leaders expressed their condolences, as did the organizing committee of the Tour de France.

The most recent attack using firearms in Copenhagen took place on February 14 and 15, 2015, when a jihadist killed two people and wounded five others.

Yesterday’s carnage in Copenhagen came days after an attack in neighboring Norway, when two people were killed by a lone gunman in Oslo.

SOURCE: AMPE