Copenhagen shooting: what happened at Field’s shopping mall as Denmark attack cancels Harry Styles concert

Danish police believe a shopping centre shooting that left three people dead and four others seriously hurt was not terror-related.

The gunman acted alone and appears to have selected his victims at random, they said on Monday (4 July).

Copenhagen chief police inspector Søren Thomassen said the victims were killed when the gunman opened fire on Sunday afternoon (3 July) in the Field’s shopping centre, one of Scandinavia’s biggest.

Here is everything you need to know about it.

What happened?

The shooting happened in the late afternoon at Field’s, one of the biggest shopping centres in Scandinavia and located on the outskirts of the Danish capital of Copenhagen.

Images from the scene showed people running out of the shopping centre in panic.

After the shooting, a big contingent of heavily armed police officers patrolled the area, with several fire department vehicles also parked outside the building.

Police received the first reports of a shooting at 5.37pm, and arrested the suspect 11 minutes later.

It was the worst gun attack in Denmark since February 2015, when a 22-year-old man was killed in a shootout with police after going on a shooting spree in the capital that left two people dead and five police officers wounded.

The Field’s shopping centre is on the outskirts of Copenhagen, just across from a subway station for a line that connects the city centre with the international airport.

“It is pure terror. This is awful,” said Hans Christian Stoltz, a 53-year-old IT consultant, who was bringing his daughters to see Harry Styles perform at a concert scheduled for Sunday night near the shopping centre.

“You might wonder how a person can do this to another human being, but it’s beyond … beyond anything that’s possible.”

The concert was cancelled due to the shooting.

The shooting came a week after a mass shooting in neighbouring Norway, where police said a Norwegian man of Iranian origin opened fire during a LGBTQ festival, killing two and wounding more than 20.

Who were the victims?

Three victims were killed when the gunman opened fire.

They were a 17-year-old boy and a 17-year-old girl, both Danes, and a 47-year-old Russian man.

Four others — two Danish and two Swedish citizens — were treated for gunshot wounds and in a critical but stable condition, Thomassen said.

Several other people received minor injuries as they fled, he added.

Who is the suspect?

Thomassen said police had no indication that anyone helped the gunman, identified as a 22-year-old Dane.

He said while the motive is unclear, there is nothing suggesting terrorism, and that the suspect would be charged later on Monday (4 July) with preliminary charges of murder.

He confirmed that the suspect was known to mental health services but provided no further information.

Danish broadcaster TV2 published a grainy photo of the alleged gunman, a man wearing knee-length shorts, a vest or sleeveless shirt, and holding what appeared to be a rifle in his right hand.

“He seemed very violent and angry,” eyewitness Mahdi Al-Wazni told TV2.

“He spoke to me and said it (the rifle) isn’t real as I was filming him. He seemed very proud of what he was doing.”

Thomassen said that besides the rifle the suspect had when detained, “we also know that he has had access to a gun and that he carried a knife”.