Three people are confirmed dead after a Tuesday afternoon shooting at a barber shop in the Swedish university town of Uppsala, located around 70 kilometers northwest of Stockholm. Police are looking for a suspect who witnesses say left the scene on an electric scooter.
According to information provided to state broadcaster SVT, one of the individuals fatally shot had been implicated in an ongoing investigation into a suspected plot targeting a relative of the notorious gang leader Ismail Abdo—a connection that casts an ominous shadow over the circumstances of his death. Abdo is on Interpol’s red list and known for a drug trade conflict with his former partner, nicknamed the Kurdish Fox, in Sweden. Both gang leaders have in the past been suspected of renting out the criminal services of their gangs to the Iranian regime.
A witness who saw the events unfold from about 30 meters away told TV4 that the shooter “walked with determination and held the weapon steady—it looked like something out of a movie. He didn’t seem to hesitate at all.”
The witness, who described the suspect as a man in his 20s, said he heard what sounded like two gunshots and saw a person fleeing the scene. “So then I hear two loud bangs. After that, I see who I think is the culprit wearing a mask, running in the same direction as the guy who’s fleeing. He calmly picks up a Voi [scooter] and continues in the same direction,” he told Expressen.
“We are investigating the incident as a murder. A so-called special incident has been initiated in order to add extra resources to the investigation” police spokesman Magnus Jansson Klarin told Expressen. “We do not know if there is one or more perpetrators, but we have received information that a masked person on an electric scooter has left the scene, he said.
As Uppsala has become a national magnet for the April 30th Walpurgis celebrations, police already had an increased presence in the city, the spokesman said. Still, a witness reports it took police 15 minutes to arrive on the scene after the emergency call.
The hunt for the suspect, described as “a masked man dressed in dark clothing and wearing sunglasses who left the scene on an electric scooter,” continued into the night and included controls of vehicles and stopping train traffic. Around midnight, nobody had been detained in relation to the shooting, Aftonbladet reported.
Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer has commented on the incident, describing it as “extremely serious.”
