A 16-year-old has been detained on suspicion of shooting and killing three people in the city of Uppsala, according to Sweden’s prosecution authority.
“An intensive investigation is under way. We are now gathering information and the police are conducting door-to-door inquiries and interviewing witnesses,” the authority said in a statement. In addition, mobile phones and other material that have been seized are being analysed.”
Police had earlier confirmed in a press conference that a detained person was suspected of murder and was one of several people being interrogated as part of the investigation, although they did not provide an age. They did, however, confirm that the victims were aged between 15 and 20.
The shooting took place at a hair salon in Uppsala, a university city 42 miles north of Stockholm, on Tuesday. Police said the attack was believed to be an isolated event and not linked to the annual Valborg celebrations expected in the city on Wednesday evening. Valborg is a Swedish bonfire festival marking the arrival of spring.
Swedish media reported that one of the deceased had connections to organised gang crime. Police would not confirm those reports but said gang-related crime was one of the theories they were pursuing “particularly intensively”.
Authorities in Sweden have been struggling to deal with gang violence, which remains at the forefront of a national debate, including growing concerns over the young age of children being caught up in the bloodshed. Guns and explosives are regularly used by rival gangs.
Police have appealed to the public for information after a masked person was seen fleeing the crime scene on an electric scooter on Tuesday.
The minister of justice, Gunnar Strömmer, condemned the killings as a “brutal act of violence”.
Police were first alerted to the incident shortly after 5pm on Tuesday, when they received several phone calls from members of the public about loud bangs. Officials later confirmed that three people were dead.
“Quite soon we encountered three people who appeared to have been shot. They did not need to be taken to hospital,” Magnus Jansson Klarin, a spokesperson for Uppsala police, told the Svenska Dagbladet daily newspaper.
The Swedish government announced in February that it planned to strengthen its weapons laws after the country’s worst mass shooting, when a gunman killed 10 people at an education centre in Örebro, west of Stockholm, before shooting himself. The man’s motives are still under investigation.
Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report
