COPENHAGEN —
A Danish man in custody on suspicion of a bow-and-arrow attack that killed five people and wounded two others in a small Norwegian town is a Muslim convert who had previously been flagged as having been radicalized, police said Thursday.
The 37-year-old suspect is believed to have shot at people in a number of locations in the town of Kongsberg on Wednesday evening. Several of the victims were in a supermarket, police said.
“There earlier had been worries of the man having been radicalized,” police official Ole B. Saeverud told a news conference. He added that there were “complicated assessments related to the motive, and it will take time before this is clarified.”
Saeverud added that the last report of concern about the suspect was last year.
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The dead were four women and one man between the ages of 50 and 70, Saeverud said.
Police were alerted at 6:12 p.m. Wednesday to a man shooting with a bow and arrows in Kongsberg, about 41 miles southwest of Oslo. Officers made contact with the suspect, but he escaped and wasn’t caught until 6:47 p.m., 35 minutes after the attack began, Saeverud said.
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Officials believe that the suspect did not start killing people until police arrived on the scene.
“From what we know now, it is reasonably clear that some, probably everyone, was killed after the police were in contact with the perpetrator,” Saeverud said.
Speaking calmly and clearly after his arrest, the suspect told police, “I did this,” said Ann Iren Svane Mathiassen, the police attorney who is leading the investigation.
“He talked calmly and clearly described what he had done. He admitted killing the five people,” she told the Associated Press.
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The rampage happened in clear view of dozens of witnesses in Kongsberg, according to onlookers. Police have already spoke to between 20 and 30 witnesses who saw the attacker wound and kill his victims, according to Svane Mathiassen.
“There are people who saw him in the city before the killings. That is when he injured people,” Svane Mathiassen said.
Witness Erik Benum, who lives on the same road as the supermarket that was one of the crime scenes, told the AP that he saw escaped shop workers sheltering in doorways.
“I saw them hiding in the corner. Then I went to see what was happening, and I saw the police moving in with a shield and rifles. It was a very strange sight,” Benum said.
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The whole town was eerily quiet Thursday morning, he said. “People are sad and shocked.”
The bow and arrow were just part of the killer’s arsenal. But police have yet to confirm what other weapons he used. Weapons experts and other technical officers are being drafted in to help with the investigation.
Both the injured victims — one of them an off-duty police officer who was inside the store — are in intensive care. Their conditions were not immediately known.
The suspect is being held on preliminary charges, which is a step short of formal charges. Police believe he acted alone.
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Police were alerted to the attack about 6:15 p.m. Wednesday and arrested the suspect about 30 minutes later.
Police spokesman Oeyvind Aas said that “we will return to a more detailed description of the course of events when we have a better overview of what happened.”
He added: “It goes without saying that this is a very serious and extensive situation, and it naturally affects Kongsberg and those who live here.”
Norwegian media reported that the suspect earlier had been convicted of burglary and possession of drugs, and last year a local court granted a restraining order ordering him to stay away from his parents for a six-month period after he threatened to kill one of them. The VG tabloid said it was unclear whether the order was extended.
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Newly appointed Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere called the attack “horrific.”
“This is unreal. But the reality is that five people have been killed, many are injured and many are in shock ,” Gahr Stoere told Norwegian broadcaster NRK on Thursday.
In a statement to the mayor of Kongsberg, King Harald V of Norway said people had seen “their safe local environment suddenly [become] a dangerous place. It shakes us all when horrible things happen near us, when you least expect it, in the middle of everyday life on the open street.”
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres wrote on Twitter that he was “shocked and saddened by the tragic news coming from Norway.”
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The main church in Kongsberg, which has a population of about 26,000, was open to anyone in need of support.
“I don’t think anyone expects to have these kinds of experiences. But nobody could imagine this could happen here in our little town,” parish priest Reidar Aasboe told the AP.
Mass killings are rare in low-crime Norway.
The country’s worst peacetime slaughter, in which 77 people died, occurred July 22, 2011, when white supremacist Anders Breivik set off a bomb in the Oslo, killing eight people, then headed to tiny Utoya island, where he methodically hunted down and killed dozens of young people attending a Labor Party conference.
Breivik was sentenced to 21 years in prison, the maximum under Norwegian law, but his term can be extended as long as he’s considered a danger to society.