In Norway Attack, ‘Sharp Object,’ Not Arrows, Killed 5, Police Say

The Norwegian police on Monday said that while a hunting bow had been used in last week’s rampage, the victims, four women and a man, were stabbed to death. OSLO — The attacker who went on a rampage in a town in Norway killed his five victims using a “sharp object,” not a bow and arrow as had been widely reported, the Norwegian police announced on Monday. Espen Andersen Brathen, who confessed to the crime, did shoot arrows at people from a hunting bow during part of his attack last Wednesday in the town of Kongsberg, which also wounded at least three people.

At some point in the rampage, the police said at a news conference Monday, he discarded the bow. The fatal blows are now said to have been delivered by a stabbing weapon or weapons, which the police did not identify. Four women and one man were killed in the attack about 50 miles southwest of Oslo. But it was the rarity of the other weapon used in the attack that caught the world’s attention, and if the hunting bow did not cause any deaths, it was responsible for at least one injury, that of an off-duty police officer who was struck by an arrow. One eyewitness, Rebecca Uttgard, 17, said she was in the town square Wednesday night near a shop owned by her mother and frequented by two of the people killed, when she heard warning shots fired by police officers responding to the scene. “I saw the arrows strewn on the ground,” Ms. Uttgard said. “I didn’t think, I just ran.” Friends and relatives of the victims said that a machete was also used in the attack ....... Source: bc.ctvnews.ca