Masked swordsman runs amok at school
CHILDREN in the Swedish town of Trollhattan witnessed scenes of horror as a masked attacker wielded a bloodied sword in their school, cutting down students and teachers.
Fourteen-year-old David Issa saw the assailant slay his teacher.
‘‘We were sitting in the cafe and this guy came up who was wearing a mask and carrying a sword and he stabbed my teacher. I panicked and ran away,’’ he said.
The attacker, identified by media as Anton Lundin Pettersson, 21, allegedly had Far-Right sympathies and may have targeted the school for its heavy immigrant population, Swedish media reports suggested.
The school has 400 students ranging from kindergarten to grade nine, or ages 6 to 15.
Wearing a Darth Vader-like mask and dressed all in black, the assailant posed for pictures with unsuspecting students who thought it was a prank or a Halloween costume.
But then he went on his rampage, stabbing two teachers he encountered near the entrance before roaming the halls and hunting down more victims.
‘‘I saw a masked man wearing black clothes coming up the stairs, he was carrying a sword covered with blood,’’ recalled Ahmed Hadi, a mathematics teacher.
‘‘He moved to another classroom. The kids were scared. We turned the lights off and put desks behind the door. We asked the kids to sit down and be calm,’’ he said.
The assailant was gunned down by police outside Hadi’s classroom and died in hospital.
Amal Ahmed, mother of 7-yearold pupil Susan, said her daughter was terrified by the horror of what she witnessed.
‘‘My daughter has been crying and talking the whole day about the blood she saw,’’ she said. ‘‘We are from Iraq. We left our country for security here in Sweden. We don’t want violence, especially for our kids.’’
Hussein Kaari said his younger brother, 14, was in the first classroom approached by the attacker.
‘‘He knocked on the door. One student opened. The guy didn’t say a word, he just attacked with his sword. The student said: ‘Oh, look, he cut me!’ The others didn’t seem to believe him, until they saw the blood flowing,’’ he said.
A teacher and a male student were killed, and another teacher and student remained in hospital with serious stab wounds.
People in Trollhattan, an industrial town of 57,000, were in shock. Some stood outside the school, holding a vigil and carrying posters reading ‘‘Why?‘‘, and ‘‘Why kill?‘‘
Police remained silent on a possible motive.
Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven visited the school, placing a bouquet of roses outside the front door as hundreds of locals looked on.