It took six minutes for the police to arrive on the scene after the first alarm. After just a few minutes, they caught sight of the perpetrator – who opened fire on them, according to the police at a press conference in Örebro on Thursday.
When the police officers enter the building, they are detected by the perpetrator, who then fires repeated shots in their direction, says Deputy Regional Police Chief Niclas Hallgren.
According to Commander Emelie Bodegrim, the police could not return fire in a safe manner.
The first police officers who entered the school area wore body cameras, and the investigation has thus been able to follow their work.
This is an important part of the investigative methods we have, she says.
Twelve minutes after the first alarm call, the perpetrator fired his last two shots: a shotgun blast that did not hit anyone and a shot that ended the perpetrator's life.
Stopped the violence
It took, however, almost an hour before he was found by the police.
We must not forget that there and then we did not know that there was only one perpetrator. There was smoke development, fire alarms, difficult operating environment – it's not surprising that it takes time to investigate the area, says Niclas Hallgren.
The perpetrator's actions before the deed have been partially clarified by the police. At 7:35 am, he was seen at the travel center, and twelve minutes later, he got off the bus at the school. It was not until 11:30 – nearly four hours later – that he was observed on the school grounds.
This is a gap we are still investigating, says Emelie Bodegrim and urges the public to provide any witness statements.
The fire alarms went off
The first alarm call about the shooting on February 4 came at 12:33 pm. Ten people were killed and six people were injured in the mass shooting. A large number of shots were fired.
We have found 70 shell casings and over a hundred cartridges on the perpetrator, says Emelie Bodegrim.
The perpetrator also threw three smoke grenades.
They made it significantly harder to survey the premises, but they also triggered the fire alarms and affected fire doors and other things, says Hallgren.
The police have sought the help of their perpetrator profiling group to try to understand who the murderer was and why he committed the act. So far, the police believe that the victims were randomly selected, although they have not been able to identify a motive.
But we are also prepared not to get the answers we want, says Bodegrim.
Corrected: In an earlier version of the text, there was an error regarding the last shots fired by Rickard Andersson.
