Three people were killed in a shooting at a Copenhagen mall on Sunday, according to local authorities. Several others have been injured, with three in critical condition in the hospital.
Copenhagen Police Chief Soren Thomassen said at a press conference early Monday morning that the victims included “a man in his 40s and two young people.”
The inspector said police received the first reports of a shooting at 5:37pm (15:37 GMT) and arrested the suspect 11 minutes later. He described the suspect as an “ethnic Dane”, a phrase typically used to mean someone is white.
According to Thomassen, the only suspect is a 22-year-old young Danish man who was arrested in connection with the shooting.
On social networks, people had been speculating about a racist motive, or some other motive, the head of the investigation said, “but I cannot say that we have anything which supports that at this moment.”
Police arrested the suspect thirteen minutes after receiving the first emergency call about the shooting, Thomassen said.
Earlier, Thomassen stated that police “can’t rule out terror,” but that the alleged shooter acted alone.
In a statement Sunday night, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen sent sympathy to the wounded, their relatives and the bereaved, as well as “all the Danes who were close to these frightening events.”
“We have all been brutally ripped from the bright summer that had just begun. It is incomprehensible. Heartbreaking. Meaningless. Our beautiful and usually so safe capital was changed in a split second,” Frederiksen said.
In a statement, Denmark’s Royal House said, “Our thoughts and deepest sympathy are with the victims, their relatives and all those affected by the tragedy.”
The shooting occurred just over a week after a gunman opened fire outside a gay bar in Oslo, Norway, killing two people and injuring 21 others.
It was also the deadliest gun attack in Denmark since February 2015, when a 22-year-old man was killed in a shoot-out with police following a shooting spree in a ‘free-speech’ forum that killed two people and injured five police officers in the capital.