The man who died in Friday’s shooting at a shopping center in Malmo, southern Sweden, is said to have been the target of the attack, city police said on Saturday.
“Currently everything indicates that this man was the target of this execution,” Malmo Police Chief Petra Stenkula said at a press conference.
One person was also injured in the shooting late Friday afternoon. It is a woman who was taken to the hospital in a serious condition and, according to police, would be a simple passer-by.
“An isolated case with links to criminal circles”
A 15-year-old boy was arrested on Friday on suspicion of the shooting. The police regard the attack as “an isolated case in connection with criminal circles” and rule out a terrorist motivation, a spokeswoman for the Malmö police said at the time to the AFP news agency.
“The shooting in a shopping center is terribly reckless, with complete disregard for the lives of others,” Social Democrat Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said on Saturday afternoon during a press conference and a visit to Malmo as part of his election campaign.
With just a few weeks to go before the elections in Sweden, crime has become one of the key issues in the national debate. Also in July, the city of Copenhagen, Denmark, some 30 kilometers from Malmo, was the scene of a shooting at a shopping center that killed three people.