Six dead after Espoo shopping mall shooting; gunman killed himself

Police describe shooter as Ibrahim Shkupolli, a man in his early 40s; Sello shopping mall evacuated and cordoned off

Ibrahim Shkupolli

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Six people have been reported dead on Thursday morning in a shooting incident that took place at the Sello shopping mall in the Leppävaara district of Espoo.
      Apparently a man in his early forties, with a previous criminal record, began shooting in the Prisma supermarket with a 9mm handgun at around 10 a.m. Police named the suspect as Ibrahim Shkupolli, a 43-year-old Kosovar Albanian who had been living in Finland since 1990.
      Shkupolli did not have a licence for the weapon.
     
First reports indicated that three men and one woman were killed at the mall.
      A fifth victim was later found at a private apartment in Leppävaara, and is believed to be the gunman's 42-year-old ex-girlfriend.
      She was employed at the Prisma supermarket in Sello, and is thought to have been the primary target. As yet it is unclear whether she was killed before or after the four persons at the mall.
      A restraining order had earlier been imposed on Shkupolli with regard to this woman, after he had allegedly threatened to kill her. The court order covered both her home and her place of work at Prisma.
      The gunman was also apparently married to a woman of Albanian background, with whom he had a family.
     
The search continued for the suspect, and his body was eventually found a couple of hours later at an apartment in the Suvela district of Espoo. Indications are that he shot himself.
      All of the victims at Sello were apparently members of the Prisma sales staff.
      Later reports from the National Bureau of Investigation, Finland's central criminal police arm, have indicated that the killer seemingly acted as if he knew precisely whom he was pointing his gun at.
      One man was shot twice in the head. The female victim was shot in the stomach and two other men were shot and killed on a different floor of the mall complex, one of the largest in the Greater Helsinki area.
      The male victims in the mall were born in 1969, 1975, and 1982. The woman was born in 1964.
      No further details were given of other casualties.
     
The mall was emptied and police continued the search for the gunman in the shopping centre and the surrounding area, before extending the net to known addresses, at which point the man's body was eventually discovered.
      Prisma store staff and witnesses were taken to the public library on the premises.
      The police held a press conference on the matter at 14:30, after a photograph of the suspect had been released to the media before the man was found dead.
      Police had warned Shkupolli was armed and dangerous.
      He had previous convictions for firearms possession offences in 2004 and 2007, and a further conviction for causing actual bodily harm.
      Numerous police vehicles and ambulances attended the scene at the mall, and for some hours commuter trains were not stopping at the adjacent Leppävaara station.
      Leppävaara is one of the larger suburbs of the fragmented city of Espoo (pop. c. 250,000), and is an important transport hub.
     
Police were not particularly forthcoming with details of the killings at the afternoon press conference, or of whether any others were hit and wounded by gunfire (apparently none were), but the impression given was that the primary target was the 42-year-old woman, and it is known that those killed in the shopping mall were her colleagues.
      The press conference itself was briefly interrupted as news came in of the discovery of the gunman's body in his home.
     
Whilst no specific reason has been given as yet for why the four persons at the mall were singled out by the gunman, the indications are that this horrible tragedy was not a "shooting-spree" killing of the kind that has made Finland internationally known in the past two years, following school massacres in Jokela and Kauhajoki by disaffected teenage pupils.
     
Nonetheless, it will inevitably reopen old wounds and will prompt further discussion on the large number of handguns and other weapons owned in this country and on the possible further tightening of restrictions on access to firearms.
      Stricter rules on the ownership of handguns were introduced last year in the wake of the Kauhajoki shootings, although in this cases, since the 9mm pistol used was illegally owned, the police have noted that a completely watertight system is beyond the country's reach.
     
At the same time, the knowledge that the killer was a foreign resident and not a Finnish citizen has prompted a good deal of writing on Finnish online message boards, some of it inflammatory and even racist in tone.
      This is in spite of the fact that the motives and circumstances of the case look increasingly as though they may bear a more than passing resemblance to recent killings of a domestic nature - more often than not entire families - carried out by Finnish husbands at the end of their personal rope.
     
President Tarja Halonen and Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen both expressed their shock at today's incident and their condolences to relatives of the victims.
      It is possible that Halonen will broach the subject of violence in Finnish society in her New Year's Address, which will be aired on Friday.
     
     
This article has been updated in the course of the day, most recently at 01:30 on 1.1.2010.

More on this subject:
 Shooting suspect previously convicted of firearms offences

Previously in HS International Edition:
  Mental health certificate now required for handgun ownership (30.9.2008)

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