Finnish School Attacker Acted Alone, Motive Not Clear

Finnish police said Wednesday they believe a man who killed a woman and wounded nine other people while wielding a sword and a firearm inside a classroom acted alone.

Chief investigator Olli Toyras of the National Bureau of Investigation says the man, who was not officially named, is suspected of murder and several murder attempts. No motive or reason for Tuesday’s attack at a vocational school was immediately known.

“At the moment it seems there’s nothing in the course of the man’s life to explain the act. In that sense the act came as a surprise,” said chief investigator Olli Toyras.

Police fired twice to stop the man, a Finnish citizen born in 1994, after he refused to obey a police order, Toyras said Wednesday. The suspect, who was seriously wounded, is in custody at a hospital.

Toyras said the man was a student at the Savo Vocational College, which occupies the second floor of the Herman shopping center in Kuopio, central Finland. The city is 220 miles northeast of the capital, Helsinki.

Finnish media say the victim was a student at the school and “the primary target” of the dark-clad attacker who entered a class with a bag and took out a sword and struck the teacher with it. They said those injured were students and staff of the school, mostly women aged 15-50.

It wasn’t clear if the attacker used his firearm.

Due to the attack, flags were lowered to half-mast on public government offices and institutions across the Nordic country on Wednesday.