Several People Dead In Copenhagen Shopping Mall Shooting

By AP
Posted on 07/03/22 | News Source: Associated Press

A gunman opened fire in a Copenhagen shopping mall, one of the largest of its kind in Scandinavia, killing an unspecified number of people and wounding several others on Sunday, police said.

The suspected gunman, who is in custody, is a 22-year-old Danish man who was detained near the Fields shopping mall on the southern outskirts of the capital, said police inspector Søren Thomassen, head of the Copenhagen police operations unit.

“We know that there are several dead” and “several injured,” Thomassen told a news conference, adding that terror can’t be ruled out. “We do not have information that others are involved. This is what we know now.”

He didn’t provide any further details on the victims or supsect, or say how many people were killed or wounded. The shopping center is on the outskirts of Copenhagen just across from a subway line that connects the city center with the international airport. A major highway also runs adjacent to Fields, which opened in 2004.

Images from the scene showed people running out of the mall, and Denmark’s TV2 broadcaster posted a photo of a man being put on a stretcher. Witnesses said people were crying and hid in shops.

Laurits Hermansen told Danish broadcaster DR that he was in a clothing store at the shopping center with his family when he heard “three-four bangs. Really loud bangs. It sounded like the shots were being fired just next to the store.”