Police confirmed that the suspected shooter was present at the mall at the time of the shooting.
Copenhagen:
Danish police said on Monday that mental health services knew the suspect in a weekend shooting at a Copenhagen shopping mall that left three people dead, including two teenagers.
“Our suspect is also known within the psychiatric services, beyond that I do not wish to comment,” Copenhagen Police Chief Soren Thomassen told a news conference.
Thomassen added that the victims appeared to have been targeted at random and that there was nothing to indicate it was a terrorist act.
“Our assessment is that the victims were random, not motivated by gender or anything else,” Thomassen said.
The police chief could not yet comment on the motive, but said there appeared to have been preparation before the attack and no one else helped the 22-year-old suspect.
“As things are, it looks like he was acting alone,” he said.
The three killed have been identified as a Danish teenager and a boy, both aged 17, and a 47-year-old Russian citizen residing in Denmark.
Four others were injured in the shooting: two Danish women, aged 19 and 40, and two Swedish citizens, a 50-year-old man and a 16-year-old woman.
Police confirmed that the suspected shooter was present at the mall at the time of the shooting and is known to police “but only peripherally.”
They added that they believe videos of the suspect circulating since Sunday night on social media are authentic.
‘Psycho Enough’
In some of the images, the young man can be seen posing with weapons, imitating suicidal gestures and talking about psychiatric medication “that does not work”.
YouTube and Instagram accounts believed to belong to the suspect were closed overnight, AFP noted.
The shooting occurred on Sunday afternoon at the busy Fields shopping mall, located between the city center and Copenhagen airport.
According to police, the shooter was armed with a rifle, a pistol and a knife, and while the weapons were not believed to be illegal, the suspect was not licensed to use them.
Witnesses quoted by Danish media described how the suspect had tried to trick people by saying his gun was fake to get them closer.
“He was psychopathic enough to go hunting people, but he wasn’t running,” a witness told public broadcaster DR.
Other eyewitnesses told Danish media that they had seen more than 100 people running towards the mall exit when the first shots were fired.
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen denounced the “cruel attack” in a statement on Sunday night.
“Our beautiful and usually so secure capital was changed in a split second,” he said.
The shooting came just over a week after a gunman opened fire near a gay bar in Oslo, neighboring Norway, killing two people and wounding 21 others.
In February 2015, two people were killed and five injured in Copenhagen in a series of Islamist-motivated shootings.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
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