A knife-wielding man killed two people and seriously injured a third in a stabbing spree at an Ikea furniture store near Stockholm.
The stabbings took place around lunchtime yesterday in the town of Västerås, an hour west of the Swedish capital. Shortly after 1pm Ikea staff warned shoppers via the store intercom to leave immediately after a man stabbed two men and a woman in the kitchen department.
Police arrived minutes later and arrested a suspect. A man and a woman both died at the scene. The third stabbing victim was taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries.
“We don’t yet have the full picture,” said one store manager, Mattias Johansson, telling local news outlet VLT he believed the victims were regular customers.
Ikea said medical crews had provided assistance and police had quickly cordoned off the scene.
Local traders in the Erikslund shopping centre told Swedish television that police had ordered them to stay inside their stores until the perpetrator had been detained.
Vacated
“They shouted through the speakers that the premises would be vacated . . . that the killer was still in the building,” said hairdresser Klara Holmgren Rappu. “Then I saw a person came out on a stretcher.”
Ikea declined to comment in detail on the stabbings, saying only that none of its staff members had been injured in the attack. Police said the person detained on suspicion of murder was not known to them.
Eyewitnesses told Sweden’s SVT television that one of those killed was a man aged around 25. The man hospitalised in a critical condition in hospital was said to be 35.
“A man was brought in with serious injuries and is undergoing emergency surgery,” said a spokeswoman for a local hospital, “and his condition is critical”.
Police wearing full riot gear sealed off the store from lunchtime to allow investigators to piece together the incident. Police spokesman Per Strömbäck said the police would not be giving any more information regarding the suspect. Yesterday afternoon they began hearing testimony from eye-witnesses.
Twelve years ago, Sweden's 46-year-old Social Democrat foreign minister Anna Lindh was stabbed to death while shopping at a Stockholm department store.
