Target Teachers and students | Attack type Murder, mass stabbing Non-fatal injuries 1 | |
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Date 22 October 2015 (2015-10-22) Deaths 4 (including the perpetrator) Similar Sana'a school shooting, Olean High School shooting, Mercaz HaRav massacre, Red Lake shootings, Azerbaijan State Oil Academy | ||
On 22 October 2015, 21-year-old Anton Lundin Pettersson attacked Kronan School in Trollhättan, Sweden, with a sword. He killed a teaching assistant and a male student, stabbed another male student and a teacher, and died later of the gunshot wounds he received during his apprehension. The second teacher who was wounded died in hospital six weeks after the attack, on December 3.
Contents
The attack was Sweden's first deadly attack on a school since the 1961 Kungälv school shooting when one person was killed and six injured. It is the deadliest attack on a school in Swedish history. The initial police investigation concluded that Pettersson was motivated by racism and had chosen the school as his target due to its location in a neighbourhood with a high immigrant population.
Background
According to Professor Ove Sernhede of the University of Gothenburg, Trollhättan has had a long history of hate crime, starting with arson at a mosque in the 1990s. Research by his colleague Anders Sundell has found it to be the most ethnically segregated city in Sweden.
Surveys frequently show Sweden to be the European country which is most tolerant of immigration, although its population is polarised on the issue. Sundell's research showed that consistently over the last 20 years, a plurality of Swedes had wanted to limit the number of refugees coming to the country, but "There is a large difference between what the politicians think and the general public, and the media have not questioned the politicians until recently". This has led to those who oppose immigration to imagine that there is a conspiracy.
Attack
Pettersson entered the school in a German WW2 helmet and a mask similar to that of Star Wars villain Darth Vader, and said the character's line "I am your father" from The Empire Strikes Back. At first eyewitnesses believed it was a Halloween prank. Dagens Nyheter published a photograph of the attacker shortly before his spree. In the picture, he posed with his sword alongside two students in a corridor.
After the photograph was taken, 20-year-old teaching assistant Lavin Eskandar ordered Pettersson to remove his mask, and pleaded for the students to run. Eskandar, a Feyli Kurd from Iraq, was stabbed and died at the scene. Pettersson then stabbed the abdomen of Ahmed Hassan, a 15-year-old born in Somalia. Hassan died in hospital; a recent Syrian migrant of the same age was attacked and also sent there. Pettersson was shot by police and died in hospital.
On the morning of 23 October, Swedish police and media confirmed that the motive behind the attack had "racist motives" and that it was a "hate crime". Niclas Hallgren, the city's police chief, stated that all of the victims were "dark-skinned". Head of investigation Thord Haraldsson said that CCTV footage showed that Pettersson spared the lives of students with white skin.
Nazir Amso, the mathematics teacher who was stabbed, died of his injuries in hospital on 3 December, at the age of 42.
Perpetrator
Anton Niclas Lundin Pettersson (22 June 1994 – 22 October 2015) was identified as the attacker at 20:00 CET (18:00 GMT) by Expressen. According to Aftonbladet, the perpetrator had visited right-wing extremist groups at social media sites supporting Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. He had also joined a group on Facebook that wants to stop immigration to Sweden. The Swedish Security Service were called in to investigate these findings. Pettersson had no criminal record and was not a member of any political organisation, but had supported a petition by the Sweden Democrats to initiate a referendum on immigration. He left a handwritten note at his home in which he declared that something had to be done about immigration, and that he did not expect to survive his spree.
Pettersson graduated from Lichron Teknikgymnasium with a diploma in Technology. He lived in an apartment in the neighbourhood of Stavre, but chose to attack the Kronan School in Kronogården, where there are more immigrants; police cited this as more evidence towards his motive. Former classmates described the perpetrator as a lonely person who "lived in his own world" and always dressed in black clothes influenced either by the emo or rock scene.
Bjørn Ihler, a survivor of Norwegian far-right extremist Anders Behring Breivik's terror attacks in 2011, wrote in The Guardian that in 2013, Pettersson had "liked" a YouTube video of former Ku Klux Klan leader Johnny Lee Clary testifying how a positive experience with a black man had caused him to disavow his previously-held beliefs.
Reactions
Prime Minister Stefan Löfven travelled to Trollhättan after news of the attack, calling it a "black day" for the country. Interior Minister Anders Ygeman wrote on Twitter, "It is with sadness and dismay I received the news of the attack on the school in Trollhättan. My thoughts go to the victims and their families". King Carl XVI Gustaf said that the royal family received the news "with great dismay and sadness".
In the days following the attack, there were reports of people wearing suspicious outfits or brandishing weapons, which were discovered to be people celebrating Halloween. The police warned the public not to carry imitation weapons with their Halloween costumes, in order to avoid potentially dangerous misunderstandings.
The school remained closed until 2 November, when it reopened with higher security. An Afghan father told The Local that he wished to leave the neighbourhood for his family's safety.