Örebro school shooting was one-man operation, police say

The gun attack that left 11 people dead in the Swedish city of Örebro was “a one-man operation”, police have said, as they worked to identify the victims of the country’s deadliest mass shooting.

The suspected gunman was among the dead and six people were hospitalised after a shooter entered Campus Risbergska, a school specialising in adult education, just after 12.30pm on Tuesday.

The Örebro police chief, Roberto Eid Forest, said at a press conference on Wednesday morning that police had not yet identified all the victims. He said there was strong evidence to suggest that the gunman shot himself.

“We still believe that it is a one-man operation. We will return to the exact motives,” he said.

Police have said there is nothing to suggest the gunman acted on ideological grounds and that the suspect, who has not been named, had no known connection to criminal gangs.

The prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, said 4 February would “for ever mark a dark day in Swedish history” as he urged the country to come together. He invited party leaders to a meeting with the justice minister and the police authority, and said the meeting would begin with a minute’s silence.

“Today, people have woken up to unimaginable sadness and pain. For those who have lost a loved one, life will never be the same again,” he said. “We are a country in mourning and we must all come together – as a nation, as fellow human beings and as leaders of the parties in the Riksdag. Together, we must help the injured and their families to bear the grief and weight of this day.”

Eid Forest said the reason it took so long to inform the public about the death toll was the size of the school premises. “It took a very long time to search and ensure that we didn’t have any more injuries,” he said.

Jonas Claesson, the director of health and medical services for the Örebro region, said five of the six people admitted to hospital had initially life-threatening gunshot wounds and were now stable after undergoing surgery. Two of them were being treated in intensive care. A sixth person had minor injuries. Four were women and two, men.

Police urged anybody who was at the school on Tuesday or had footage of the attack to come forward. They asked the public to share only confirmed information.

A meeting was held in central Örebro for relatives, where Eid Forest said they would be informed about “the continued work on, among other things, identification and how it will be done”.

Kristersson, his justice minister, Gunnar Strömmer, and King Carl Gustaf and Queen Silvia were due to visit Örebro later on Wednesday.

Johanna Sollerman, who works in crime strategy in the municipality and is a crisis manager, said: “We’re going to live with this as a mark for a very long time. However, what we are starting to see is civil society together with the municipality and police really rallying around for citizens of Örebro.”

She said they were in the process of setting up centres around the city where victims’ families and members of the community could speak to social workers, members of the Red Cross and representatives of churches and mosques. They were also in the process of making decisions about memorial places and a silence of remembrance.

She said Campus Risbergska mostly ran education courses for adults, including for those learning Swedish, training in professions such as nursing, and studying to go to university. “The school is a society of different backgrounds,” she said.

Schools in the municipality had been training and practising for how to stop such an incident, she said, because it was known to be a potential risk. “For a few years now we’ve been training on how schools should act to stop a lone actor. We’ve been training in that because we know it can happen.”

The municipality had taken a proactive approach to mapping criminals and gangs, she said, but “this kind of situation is very difficult for us to detect”.

She added: “We’ve been teaching it, practising it, but to actually go through it is unimaginable. We wouldn’t believe in a million years that Örebro would be the scene for this tragedy.”