Almost a week after the shooting the police is still looking for the motive behind the worst mass shooting in Sweden’s history which shocked the country.
The shooting took place last Tuesday at the Risbergska high school, one of the most known schools in Örebro with around 2,000 students, including adult students and migrants learning Swedish. The perpetrator, who has been identified as a 35-old “lone wolf” and a former student at the school, shot 10 people to death before he took his own life.
“Many more are injured and traumatised. Even more are grieving family members, friends and colleagues,” Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson stated in his speech to the nation on Sunday evening.
“Sweden is a country in mourning. My thoughts are with the relatives who have now received the call they feared would come; the worst call you can get. They came from different places in the world and had different dreams.”
The Prime Minster asked all of Sweden to stop, this Tuesday at 12 noon, and honour all those affected by uniting in a national minute of silence.
The attack still arouses concern and fear, he added. “Among students and parents who wonder if it could happen again. Among people with a foreign background, who testify to a feeling of particular vulnerability.”
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson addressing the nation, 9 February, credit: Magnus Liljegren / Regeringskansliet
A senior police officer said yesterday that the motive for the act is still unclear. “We are working to find a clear motive,” said the police's chief of operations. “We’ll not give up, we will clarify what happened and why." He is convinced that the police’s intervention influenced the course of events and interrupted the deadly violence of the perpetrator who came armed with semi-automatic rifles.
Another senior officer said that he was not sure that the motive would be found. “What I'm absolutely sure of is that we will find out the circumstances surrounding the perpetrator that will form the basis for an assessment of probable causes for what happened.”
Possible motives
While the police are looking for a motive, all victims have been identified. Does it appear from the names whether they had an immigrant background?
“I have seen some names and it is true that they are all foreign, but I don’t dare to say that he was driven by hatred of immigrants,” Jonas Trolle, acting director-general at the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, told The Brussels Times.
“At the municipal adult education school (Komvux) where he studied, there were certainly many immigrant students and the school also runs Swedish language education for immigrants, so he must have encountered students with an immigrant background. A TV channel has published video recordings where someone can be heard shouting 'Get out of Sweden' but it is not clear who shouted it.”
He refers to the police and prosecution authorities regarding the on-going investigation but does not exclude other motives. According to newspaper reports, the perpetrator attended a special class during his school years and was diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder. Is it likely that he was bullied at school?
“It’s quite common for bullying to happen during school hours and for bullying to leave deep scars later in life that are difficult to recover from, regardless of whether the injustice is imagined or real,” he commented. “I cannot say more than that at this stage.”
Safety in schools
Jonas Trolle chaired a public inquiry on safety in schools whose report was published last December. The report states, among other things, that schools' preventive work against bullying is central to reducing all forms of school violence.
The perpetrator had taken a hunter's exam and received a hunting license for four weapons, including semi-automatic rifles. How did it happen?
The training is conducted by trainers from the Swedish Hunters' Association who also investigate the suitability for a hunting license, he explained.
“The police authority issues hunting licenses for weapons to those who have completed the training after checking that the applicants do not have a criminal record, but without interviewing them. After what happened, the procedures for issuing licenses can certainly be questioned.”
Could the school shooting have been prevented if your proposals in the school safety inquiry had been implemented?
“Our proposals focus on preventive measures such as tighter control of who has access to schools and boosting crime prevention information in education,” he replied. “The inquiry also places higher demands on the surrounding society.”
In this case, measures such as access control would not have helped because the student was known as a student at the school. Possibly, bag checks would have prevented him from being allowed in with several weapons.
“Ideally, it is important to identify signs, such as messages on social media, that may indicate that a person will commit an act of violence,” he added. “People prone to violence can usually be identified at an early stage. But even that was difficult in this case, where the perpetrator lived a lonely life and without any social contacts, had broken with his family and completely fell under the police radar.”
Finally, how do you assess the police response? According to newspaper reports, the police were quickly on site after the first alarm but hesitated to intervene due to smoke in the school that obstructed visibility. It then took about half an hour for the police response team to arrive.
“In my opinion, the police acted completely correctly,” Jonas Trolle concluded. “All police officers have undergone training to intervene in an ongoing school shooting or similar incidents, but in the situation that arose, they could not easily shoot at the perpetrator without risking hitting innocent people. It wouldn’t have made any difference if the special task force had been on site first.”
