Norway Bow-and-Arrow Suspect Had Been Reported for Radicalization

The suspect, who lived in Kongsberg and has a felony file which include dying threats, burglary and drug possession, was reported to law enforcement for possible radicalization very last year, said area law enforcement chief Ole B. Sæverud. Police are investigating whether the attack was an act of terrorism, Mr. Sæverud said

The suspect is considered to have acted by itself and is cooperating with the investigation, Mr. Sæverud told reporters Thursday.

4 females and 1 male concerning the ages of fifty and 70 were killed in the attack, Mr. Sæverud said. The attacker is considered to have picked his victims at random, he additional.

Witnesses of the attack, which started at a grocery store right after six p.m. on Wednesday, advised area tv that they saw a male wielding a large bow and carrying a quiver whole of arrows on his shoulder looking people down.

Regional media broadcast visuals of arrows embedded in walls of structures and lying on the sidewalk.

The suspect moved throughout the city for about 30 minutes right after law enforcement received the original get in touch with, until he was arrested by officers who fired warning pictures, Kongsberg law enforcement chief Øyvind Aas said.

The two injured people, 1 of whom is an off-duty law enforcement officer who took place to be at the grocery store at the time of the attack, are remaining handled at a close by medical center, Mr. Aas said.

“We are all shaken by these awful gatherings that took place in our midst, when 1 least envisioned them, on a standard day in the center of the street,” Norway’s king and head of point out, Harald V, said in an open letter to the mayor of Kongsberg.

Sections of Kongsberg, a ski resort, were cordoned off by law enforcement as forensic teams probed the web sites where by people were attacked.

Police officers throughout the country, who are typically unarmed, were purchased to have guns while on duty right after the attack. A law enforcement spokesman said the measure was a precaution and not a outcome of any intelligence about heightened risk levels.

Regional safety expert services have said in the previous that the country, which is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Business, was at risk from an Islamist terrorist attack.

Norway has restrictive gun-ownership rules that ban private possession of automatic weapons, but hunters and sport shooters are permitted to very own certain varieties of handguns and rifles if they attain a firearms license, which calls for a clean law enforcement file.

One of the world’s most affluent and cheapest-criminal offense nations, Norway has been strike by mass shootings in the the latest previous. In 2019, a gunman opened hearth in a mosque near Oslo but no 1 was injured for the reason that worshipers speedily overpowered him.

In 2011, much-proper extremist

Anders Behring Breivik

killed 77 people in and close to Oslo, most of them teenage attendees of a summer camp organized by a middle-still left bash.

Compose to Bojan Pancevski at [email protected]