Kankaanpää gunman may have been seeking retaliation for earlier manslaughter

Victim had shot dead the killer’s father in Kankaanpää in 1980

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Police have now revealed that the fatal shooting at a restaurant in Kankaanpää on the night between Saturday and Sunday could be related to another homicide dating back more than 30 years.
      The man who died at the scene had killed the gunman's father with a handgun in Kankaanpää in December 1980. The old homicide took place in the father’s apartment.
      Sunday's victim was about 18 years old when he killed the man more than 30 years ago. He was found guilty of manslaughter.
     
The police are investigating whether Sunday’s homicide was carried out in retaliation for the earlier crime. ”It is one alternative”, says Inspector Pentti Lehtimäki.
      However, Lehtimäki stresses that the motive of Sunday’s shooting is still unclear.
      Police enquiries are only in their early stages and Lehtimäki is unable to say whether the two men had had any dealings with each other in the past few years.
      The police have remanded in custody a 52-year-old Jalasjärvi man suspected of murder.
      According to the police, the perpetrator arrived in the Siili restaurant sober and unmasked, fired five shots towards the victim with a 9-mm handgun at close range without saying anything, and then exited the restaurant quickly by the front door.
      The victim died instantly.
     
One of the bullets ricocheted off the floor, penetrating boxer Martti Koota’s foot and fracturing a bone.
      At the time of the shooting, the number of customers drinking at the 250-seat Siili restaurant was still in excess of 100.
      A few minutes later, police detained the man in the vicinity of the restaurant. He did not resist arrest.
      Both the suspected shooter and the dead victim are members of the Finnish Roma minority.
     
The oroginal homicide has actually led to another killing on a previous occasion. At Midsummer 2007, a 20-year-old Roma man shot dead an 18-year-old man at the Mäntsälä dance pavilion.
      According to the court findings in that case, the motive behind the shooting was a dispute between two Roma families relating to a breach of the tradition of "avoidance", such that a perpetrator from one family of a crime against another is obliged to move elsewhere, or at least avoid coming into contact with the kin of his victim.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Kankaanpää killer "looked expressionless" as he opened fire in bar (5.9.2011)

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