Sweden respond to horror in the midst of Walpurgis Festival

In anticipation of the Walpurgis festival of Sweden on the occasion of the start of spring, young people were busy selecting outfits or getting their hair done. They didn’t make it all alive.

In a hair salon in Uppsala, a city north of Stockholm, three young men who, according to the police between the ages of 15 and 20, were shot on Tuesday before the celebrations started.

The horror left many in the construction of the festival, known as Valborg in Swedish, which is usually a pleasant affair every 30 April on the eve of the Christian holiday of Saint Walpurga. Celebrated nationwide, Uppsala organizes the largest and most controversial Walpurgis events in the country, popular with students.

The parties took place in full swing, but a subtle gravity hung over the Swedish blue and yellow flags that fluttered around the city.

And now, with the festival that is ready, it is only police tape – not flags – fluttering outside the barber shop where the Shooting took place near Vakala Square.

“It’s really sad,” says 20-year-old Student Yamen Alchoum, who is in the area to eat at a nearby food truck. He says that in the night of the shootings he was in another hairdressing store, but rather had cut his hair several times in this salon. “I think if I was there (on Tuesday) … I would be involved in the shooting. And it’s a bit scary.”

According to witnesses who spoke with Swedish media TV4 and Aftonbladet, two of the young victims were dressed in hairdressing caps and were in Salon chairs when they were shot in the head on Tuesday.

The city center was busy at the time when commuters took their way to the nearby train station and students from the prestigious university of the city to cycle back to their flats.

Witnesses reported that they heard loud pony who knew many for fireworks. Minutes later several police cars and an ambulance arrived, blocked the street and forced a bus to turn around. Helicopters and drones were sent to try to detect the suspect. Local media reported that he had worn a mask and used an electric scooter to get away from the scene.

“I heard the helicopters, so then I knew something had happened,” says Sara, a 32-year-old who lives on the street. She says that her phone quickly illuminates with news reports and text messages from friends who ask if she was good.

About two hours after the shootings, the police arrested a 16-year-old boy. In Sweden, suspects can be held on the basis of different levels of suspicion, and the teenager was initially kept at the second highest level, which indicates a strong suspicion.

By Friday, however, the prosecutors said that the case was weakened against him and that he was released.

On Saturday, the Swedish police confirmed that Six people have now been arrested in connection with the case. The suspects vary in age of younger than 18 to 45, according to the office of the public prosecutor, and they are suspected of executing the murders.

People who were planning to visit Uppsala for the Walpurgis festival were advised not to change their plans, because the police promised extra resources in the streets of the cathedral city and suggested that the shooting was probably an “isolated incident”.

While many were shaken, tens of thousands of Sweden were still on their advice, in which they pack the banks of the Fyris River of Uppsala to view the annual student raft race, drink in the pubs and parks of the city or on the way to a huge public bonfire in the evening. Others joined the annual spring ceremony outside the university where current and former students gathered to wave white caps.

“I don’t really feel so scared,” says Alvin Rose, 19, a student of social studies, who has a snack on the Vakalaplein, just around the corner where the shootings took place. “It feels like there is more security, more agents left.”

His friend Kassandra Fritz, an 18-year-old Natural Sciences student, says she drove to Uppsala from her house in Gävle, two hours north, to “have fun and meet new people”.

She reflects that she no longer has a “strong” response to news about shootings in Sweden, because they are often in the headlines. “There have been so many shootings lately, not only here in Uppsala, but like everywhere in Sweden.”

In the past decade, Sweden has emerged as a European hotspot for weapon crimeOften linked to criminal networks. Research Before the National Council for Criminal Prevention of Sweden concluded that last year it was released that the profile of perpetrators is “becoming younger”, with a growing number of teenagers who are both hanging out and dying of arms violence.

The Sweden of Sweden, Ulf Kristersson, was on a work trip to Valencia when the shooting took place on Uppsala, but has since described it as “an extremely violent act”.

“This underlines that the wave of violence is not over – it will continue,” he said in an interview with the Swedish news agency TT on Wednesday.

During a press conference the next day, officers said that they investigate the possibility that the dead were linked to gang crime, but said it was too early to confirm this.

Police In various Swedish cities, it has previously said that it is becoming increasingly common for gangs to contract vulnerable children to perform crimes, because those who are 15 years older are lower than the age of criminal responsibility in Sweden.

The Swedish government recently proposed controversial new legislation that would enable the police to complete children, in an attempt to prevent them from being recruited for teenage gangs.

Ministers also said that they want to sharpen the laws of the country.

In February, 10 people were killed in the Lands worst massive shooting In a center for adult education in the Swedish city of Orebro. In this case, the police suspect that a 35-year-old was behind the murders. He legally owned a weapon and was found dead in the building.

Outside the hair salon in Uppsala, the 20-year-old Yamen says that he was never involved in gangcrime, but many others know who have done that.

“Often at my school there was gang violence and on the street – dealers,” he says. “But my personality was to work, study and now I’m at the university.”

While he leaves to meet friends, a steady stream of young people continues to stop on the street corner next to the hairdressers, some bring bouquets of flowers. Different corpses visibly shocked and have tears in their eyes.

“I knew him very well,” says Elias, a 16-year-old who says he was friends with one of the victims, and the BBC asked not to share his last name. “It feels unreal, you know. It doesn’t feel like I really accepted the situation.”