A teacher and a student were killed, and another student gravely injured, by a masked attacker who stabbed his victims at a school in Sweden. The attacker was shot by authorities and later died at a nearby hospital.
According to a statement from the hospital released by the Guardian, a male teacher was pronounced dead at the scene, and the two students, ages 11 and 15, were brought to a nearby hospital after suffering severe stab wounds. The AP reports that police have confirmed one of the students has died.
A police spokesperson said the suspect was armed with “at least one knife-like object.” In a report from the BBC, one student described the suspect as wearing a mask, black clothes, and carrying a sword; another, who spoke to Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, said the attacker was wearing a Star Wars mask.
Police responded to a call about an attack in the cafe area at the Kronan school in Trollhattan, a city of 50,000 inhabitants in western Sweden. According to the police spokesperson, authorities fired two shots, one of which hit the suspect. The suspect is believed to have been in his 20s.
Sweden’s prime minister Stefan Lofven will travel to Trollhattan today, and called today a ”black day for Sweden.” School shootings are rare in Sweden—in 2001, a 16-year-old was shot to death at a school in Stockholm. Before that, one person was killed and six were injured in an attack in Kungalv in 1961.