"Isolated incident" 16-year-old arrested after fatal shooting in Sweden
For years, Sweden has been grappling with an alarming level of gang crime in which minors are repeatedly involved. This time, too, the suspect is a teenager.
30.04.2025, 11:03
30.04.2025, 11:13
dpa
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- A 16-year-old suspect has been arrested in Uppsala after a shooting that left three people dead.
- The police say it was an isolated incident, but suspect a connection with the frequent gang wars in Sweden, which often involve minors.
- The country has been struggling for years with violent gangs competing for control of the drug trade.
Following the shooting in the Swedish university town of Uppsala, which left three people dead, the police arrested an underage suspect. He is suspected of murder, the investigators announced at a press conference this morning. The scene of the crime was a hairdressing salon in the city center, where the three people were found shot late Tuesday afternoon. It was an "isolated incident" that had nothing to do with the upcoming Walpurgis Night celebrations.
The suspect is a 16-year-old, according to the responsible public prosecutor Andreas Nyberg. According to media reports, the dead men were between 15 and 20 years old. The police did not initially confirm this.
Sweden struggles with criminal gangs
At the press conference, Uppsala's police chief Erik Åkerlund did not want to confirm that the horrific act had its origins in the notorious Swedish gang milieu. However, there are many similarities to previous incidents involving rival gangs - including the possibly young age of the victims and the arrested suspect. A year and a half ago, the mother of a high-ranking gang member who had fallen out with the boss of his original gang was also killed in Uppsala. This led to a renewed wave of violence in the region, which has flared up again and again since then.
Sweden has been grappling for years with criminal gangs that are fighting for market sovereignty in the drugs business, among other things. The various gang conflicts in the Scandinavian EU country repeatedly lead to fatal shootings and deliberately caused explosions in front of apartment buildings, for example. The gangs often recruit underage teenagers for their crimes.
