A teacher and a student are dead after an attack at a school in Trollhattan, Sweden Thursday morning.
The suspect allegedly entered the school wearing a black mask, armed with two weapons, one of which was likely a sword. One student told reporters that people asked to take pictures with the masked suspect before the attack. They believed it was a Halloween joke. “He wore a mask and black clothes. There were students asking to take pictures with him and touch the sword,” the student said.
A teacher reportedly confronted the masked suspect and was then attacked. A female student told reporters that her teacher went into the hall to remove the suspect’s mask and that’s when the suspect stabbed the teacher with the sword.
Laith Alazze, a 14 year-old student, told Sweden’s TV4, “One of my friends walked over to him to challenge him, but when we saw he stabbed him (the teacher), we ran away.”
Police responded to the emergency call at 10:10 a.m. local time and found two injured students and a teacher that was pronounced dead on arrival from his injuries. One student later died in the hospital while the other remains alive but in critical condition. The victims have not been named.
The scene was described by witnesses as chaos with the approximately 400 students running to safety. Police spokesman Thomas Fuxborg told reporters that the police fired two shots, one of which hit the suspect who is believed to be a local man in his early 20s.
The suspect is currently in custody at a hospital where he is being treated for a gunshot wound to his lower chest.
Sweden’s Prime Minister Stefen Lofven traveled to the scene from Stockholm and described it as a “Black day for Sweden.”
No motive for the attack has been given.
