COPENHAGEN — A masked man stabbed four people Thursday at a school in southern Sweden, killing one teacher and a student before being shot by police, authorities said. One student said he thought the attacker was in a Halloween costume.
Students fled from the Kronan school in Trollhattan, near Goteborg, Sweden’s second-largest city, as the attack took place in a nearby cafe just after 10 a.m., police said. The school has 400 students, ranging from pre-school to high school.
Police arrived to find one male teacher already dead and two male students and another male teacher seriously wounded, police spokesman Thomas Fuxborg told The Associated Press. One of the students died later at the hospital.
Police fired two shots, one of which hit the attacker, a 21-year-old man from Trollhattan, Fuxborg said. The attacker’s motive was not known, he added.
A witness told The Local, an English-language newspaper in Sweden, the attacker was wielding a sword. Stefan Gustavsson, a police spokesman, told the AP the attacker possibly had two blades on him. He said authorities knew the attacker had killed the teacher “because of the wounds he had.”
