Swedish police detain 16-year old murder suspect over Uppsala shootings

By Johan Ahlander and Louise Rasmussen

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Swedish police detained a 16-year-old early on Wednesday on suspicion of murdering three people in a hair salon in the city of Uppsala, prosecutors said.

The victims, aged 15-20, were shot dead late on Tuesday afternoon just as Uppsala, a university town 40 minutes north of Stockholm, was gearing up for Walpurgis Night, one of the busiest holidays in the city.

"An intensive investigation is underway. We are now gathering information and the police are conducting door-to-door inquiries and interviewing witnesses," the Swedish Prosecution Authority said in a statement.

"In addition, mobile phones and other material that has been seized are being analysed."

Police told a news conference that it was too early to say if the shooting was gang related, but that it was one of the theories they were pursuing "particularly intensively".

They said the victims were all 15-20 years old but declined to give more information about them, saying they had not been conclusively identified yet.

Sweden's legal system ranks detentions according to the level of evidence authorities believe they hold against a suspect, and the 16-year-old had been detained under the highest level, the Prosecution Authority said.

Court documents, heavily redacted due to the suspect's young age, showed a person had been arrested on Wednesday, just after midnight. The court-appointed lawyer for the suspect did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

GANG VIOLENCE

Sweden has suffered from a wave of gang-related violence for more than a decade that has included an epidemic of gun violence.

Sweden had 2.5 times more gun deaths than the EU average in 2023. So far this year, 25 people have been shot dead in the country of 10.5 million inhabitants.

There has been a wave of attacks carried out by minors at the behest of criminal gangs, who exploit the Swedish legal system which carries substantially softer sentences for people under the age of 18.

Many gang leaders direct operations from abroad, making it difficult for Swedish police to apprehend those commissioning the killings, though they have made some headway in bringing down the number of shootings.

"Regardless of what is behind it, it is a violence that no decent society can accept and must stop," Minister of Justice Gunnar Strommer told a news conference on Wednesday.

"We will not slow down in this work," he said.

Police said the incident was believed to be "an isolated event" and not linked to extensive celebrations expected for Walpurgis Night, a festive occasion where families and students gather around bonfires to celebrate spring.

(Reporting by Johan Ahlander and Niklas Pollard in Stockholm and Louise Rasmussen in Copenhagen, editing by Terje Solsvik and Aidan Lewis)