HELSINKI: A gunman clad in black went on a shooting rampage Thursday, killing his ex-girlfriend then slaying four workers at a suburban shopping mall near Helsinki before turning his gun on himself, police said.
Finnish police said one woman and three men were shot dead Thursday morning at the Sello shopping mall in Espoo, 10 km west of Helsinki. All four were mall employees.
The gunman was identified as 43-year-old Ibrahim Shkupolli, an immigrant who had been living for several years in Finland, police superintendent Jukka Kaski said at a news conference.
Shkupolli killed his ex-girlfriend in a nearby apartment with an unlicensed handgun before heading to the mall, Kaski said.
The ex-girlfriend, a Finnish woman born in 1967, also worked at the mall and had taken out a restraining order against Shkupolli, Kaski said. He refused to speculate if the four workers had been targeted by the shooter.
Witnesses said panic erupted at the mall, one of the Nordic region’s largest, when the shots rang out and the initial instructions from police were confusing.
“The first announcement was to close the shop and get everybody out. Immediately after the first one, they announced you can reopen the shop again,” mall worker Joonatan Hongel told Associated Press Television News. “But then five minutes after that, there was an announcement to close the shops again and get everyone out.”
Hundreds of mall workers and shoppers were evacuated to a nearby library and firehouse, local trains to the mall were halted and helicopters whirled overhead as police launched a manhunt for the heavily armed killer.
After several hours, a body was found in Shkupolli’s home. Police later confirmed it was the shooter and said he had committed suicide.
The midmorning slayings shocked those who had gone shopping early on New Year’s Eve. One witness told the state broadcaster YLE that a gunman dressed in black began randomly shooting at people on the second floor of the mall.
