Several people killed in Copenhagen mall shooting, police say
By Susanne Gargiulo, Kim Norgaard, Pierre Meilhan, Jorge Engels and Tara Subramaniam, CNN
A shooting at a mall in Copenhagen has left several people dead and at least three hospitalized, local authorities said Sunday.
One person has been arrested, Copenhagen Head of Police Soren Thomassen told reporters at a news conference. He described the suspect as a 22-year-old ethnic Danish man.
Police have not ruled out the possibility that the incident is terror-related, and an extensive police investigation is underway across the country, Thomassen said.
The shooting unfolded on Sunday at multiple locations inside Field’s, a shopping center in the Danish capital, he also said. Social media footage showed people running through the mall and heavily armed law enforcement officers on the scene.
Eyewitness Joachim Olsen, a former Danish politician and athlete, told CNN that he was on his way to a gym inside Field’s when he saw large groups of people exiting the mall.
“It looked like something, I’m sorry to say, like something you would see from a school shooting in the US, people coming out with their hands above their heads,” Olsen said.
“You have people running out, looking for friends and calling friends and family members who were inside, some speaking to friends who were inside,” he said. “Old people with their arms around the necks of people carrying them out, their feet just being dragged across the floor.”
Outside the mall, Olsen spoke to a man who spoke to an off-duty paramedic whose arms “were covered in blood up to his elbows.”
“He wanted to go back in but the police wouldn’t let him,” Olsen said.
According to Olsen, security tried to get the crowds to move away from the mall.
“At one point we were rushed away. The police came and said ‘Run, run, run, they’re still shooting in there.'”
A spokesman for Rigshospitalet, Denmark’s largest hospital, told CNN that the hospital had taken in several victims from the incident, and had called in extra staff to deal with the emergency.
In a statement Sunday night, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen sent sympathy to the wounded, their relatives and the bereaved, as well as “all the Danes who were close to these frightening events.”
“We have all been brutally ripped from the bright summer that had just begun. It is incomprehensible. Heartbreaking. Meaningless. Our beautiful and usually so safe capital was changed in a split second,” Frederiksen said.
In a statement, Denmark’s Royal House said, “Our thoughts and deepest sympathy are with the victims, their relatives and all those affected by the tragedy.”
The President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, also expressed solidarity with the people of Denmark.
“Thinking of everyone in #Copenhagen tonight after horrific reports of several people killed in a shooting in a shopping mall. We are with you Denmark,” she tweeted.
This is developing story and will be updated.
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Journalist Susanne Gargiulo reported from Copenhagen.
