| Gunman Kills Himself and Five Others in S. Finland |
[Feb. 3rd, 2010|03:49 pm] |
"A gunman went on a shooting rampage Thursday, killing his former girlfriend then slaying four others at a suburban shopping center before fatally shooting himself, police said.
Finnish police said three men and one woman, all employees at the Sello shopping center in Espoo, 10 kilometers west of Helsinki, were shot dead by a man using an unlicensed 9mm handgun.
A fifth victim, the ex-girlfriend of the suspect, was found dead in a house in Espoo.
Police identified the shooter as Ibrahim Shkupolli, 43, am immigrant who had been living in Finland for several years, and said he was found dead in his flat in Espoo. Finnish media reported that Shkupolli was an ethnic Albanian from Kosovo.
Police Superintendent Jukka Kaski said the former girlfriend, a Finnish woman born in 1967, also worked at the mall and had taken out a restraining order against Shkupolli.
The midmorning slayings shocked hundreds of people 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.
Finland has one of the world's highest gun ownership rates, ranking third behind the United States and Yemen at the end of 2006. There are about 1.6 million privately owned firearms for 5.3 million people in the country.
In November 2007, eight people were killed in a school shooting in Jokela in southern Finland. In September 2008, 10 people were fatally shot in another school shooting in Kauhajoki in western Finland.
The Finnish government has been considering tougher gun laws because of an increased number of shootings in recent years.
The government has raised the minimum age for buying firearms from 15 to 18 following the school shooting in 2007 and is planning to raise the age to 20.
" |
|
|
