Norway town absorbs the horror of local’s bow-and-arrow attack
KONGSBERG, NORWAY » Residents of a Norwegian town with a proud legacy of producing coins, weapons and silver grappled Friday with the horrible knowledge that someone living in their community used a bow and arrow to attack people doing their grocery shopping or other evening activities — and succeeded in killing five of them.
On a central square in Kongsberg, a former mining town of 26,000 people surrounded by mountains and located southwest of Norway’s capital, people laid flowers and lit candles in honor of the four women and a man who died in Wednesday’s attack. The victims ranged in age from 50 to 70, police have said.
“This a small community so almost everybody knows each other, so it’s a very strange and very sad experience for us,” Ingeborg Spangelo, a teacher who brought her students to the impromptu memorial, said. “It is almost surreal or unreal.”
Officers arrested a Kongsberg resident identified as Espen Andersen Braathen, a 37-year- old Danish citizen. He was detained about a halfhour after he allegedly began firing arrows in a supermarket where police tried to confront him but lost sight of him when he fired at them and they had to take cover, law enforcement authorities have said.
Andersen Braathen proceeded from the supermarket into a quiet downtown neighborhood of wooden houses and birch trees, where he fired at people on the street and inside some apartments, police said. Along with the five people killed, three were injured.
Senior police officer Per Thomas Omholt said Friday that three weapons in all were used in the attack, but declined to identify the types or to reveal how the five victims were killed, saying investigators need to interview more witnesses and don’t want their accounts tainted by what they read in the news.
Officers who responded to the first alert at 6.13. p.m., encountered the perpetrator in the supermarket. That is where an offduty police officer who was shopping was injured, reportedly hit by an arrow in the shoulder. Police were shot at twice with arrows, and as they sought shelter and called for reinforcement, the suspect managed to escape. Investigators believe the five victims were killed afterwards.
“The killings were committed both outdoors and indoors. Among other things, (the suspect) has visited private addresses. In addition, arrows were fired at people in the public space,” Omholt told a news conference.
The regional prosecutor leading the investigation has said that Andersen Braathen confessed to the killings after his arrest, and police said they think he acted alone. Norway’s domestic intelligence agency said Thursday that the case appeared to be “an act of terrorism” but cautioned that the investigation was ongoing.
Norwegian broadcaster NRK said Friday that in 2015 the agency, known by its acronym PST, got information about Andersen Braathen and in 2017 they met the suspect. The following year, PST contacted Norwegian health authorities about the man and concluded that he was not driven by religion or ideology, but was seriously mentally ill. The VG newspaper said PST then believed he could carry out a “low-scale attack with simple means in Norway.”
PST had no immediate comment.
Omholt said that as of Friday, investigators were continuing to explore possible motives or reasons for the attack but their “strongest hypothesis for motive is illness.” His “health has deteriorated,” the officer said, declining to give specifics.
“We work with several hypotheses. They are weakened and strengthened during the investigation,” Omholt said. “We will find out what has happened, and why.”
Andersen Braathen has been transferred to a psychiatric facility. Omholt added that “at least” two experts will observe and evaluate Andersen Braathen to determine if he was legally sane at the time of the attack.