Police Confirm Masked Man's Fatal Sword Attack on Swedish School Was "Racially Motivated"

The killer reportedly had a fascination with Hitler and Nazi Germany.

"[The attacker] appeared to choose his victims among people with immigrant backgrounds. News accounts said he killed a 20-year-old male teacher and a 17-year-old pupil from Somalia, and wounded two others — a teacher in her early 40s and a 15-year-old student from Syria — before he was shot and killed by the police."

The masked man armed with a sword who killed two people at a school in Sweden earlier this week is now believed to have been motivated by racist intentions, local authorities told reporters on Friday. Investigators in the grief-stricken town of Trollhattan are now considering the attack a hate crime due to the 21-year-old man’s clothing, general behavior, and troubling social media habits.

The assailant reportedly went from one classroom to the next dressed in black clothes and what some have described as a "Darth Vader-like mask and German WWII helmet," according to Yahoo News. He ultimately killed two people, one teacher and one teenage student, before injuring two others. Victims appeared to be chosen with intention, according to reports gathered by the New York Times, and were centered on a violent anti-immigration stance:

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"We can see that he had clothes related to right-wing groups, and we found some other things that pointed in that direction," Stefan Gustafsson, a spokesperson for the regional police, told the Times. "It is too early to talk of a precise motive. The path to his becoming a killer is a long journey." Niclas Hallgren, a chief of police in Trollhattan, backed up Gustafsson's assertion to the Guardian: "He chose dark-skinned people, not white. We are convinced it was a hate crime with a racist perspective."

Thord Haraldsson, a police investigator, added that the masked attacker clearly targeted "those with dark complexions." As quoted by Yahoo News, Haraldsson also asserts that the investigation is currently "pointing to Nazism." In addition to documents uncovered at the killer’s residence that reportedly indicate the attack was a planned hate crime, a search of his social media accounts is said to have revealed a fascination with Nazi Germany, Hitler, and a far-right Swedish political party.

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