SHARE
COPY LINK
MALMÖ SHOOTINGS

SHOOTINGS

Malmö shooter a suspect in two more murders

Peter Mangs, who is believed to be behind a string of shootings in Malmö in southern Sweden, is now suspected of two additional murders from 2003 and five more attempted murders dating back to 2006, a prosecutor revealed to news agency TT on Monday.

Malmö shooter a suspect in two more murders

Mangs denies the crimes. He was remanded in custody in early November, facing one charge of murder and five charges of attempted murder. A negotiation for detention hearing will be held on Tuesday.

“The 38-year-old suspected serial shooter in Malmö is suspected of two additional murders,” chief prosecutor Solveig Wollstad told TT on Monday, adding that she submitted a new detention request the same day.

The two additional murders involve the killings of two men in two different apartments in Malmö’s Lindängen district in 2003. The incidents took place on the same street a month and a half apart.

Polie did not find any evidence that tied the two cases together. A 66-year-old man was found shot to death in his apartment on June 14th, but the crime probably took place the day before.

The second victim was a 23-year-old man who was shot to death outside his residence on July 28th he was on his way to work. Both victims were of foreign origin and lived near each other.

The elderly man had been robbed, but 23-year-old’s wallet was left behind with a large amount of money.

The suspicions “are sufficient for me to remand him in custody for credible motives,” Wollstad told TT on Monday.

The suspect denies the crime, according to investigation leader Börje Sjöholm.

“However, he is conversing,” he said.

Sjöholm said he would not rule out the possibility that the man may be a suspect in more crimes.

“However, on what type of crime it may be, I have no any idea. We are working on it and there are shootings that we are looking at,” he said.

He added that a wide-ranging investigation remains at hand. Police and the prosecutors will hold a press conference after the meeting on Tuesday.

“They will report on the investigation,” said Lars-Håkan Lindholm, communications officer at Skåne police.

Separately, Mangs is also suspected of suffering from a serious mental disorder.

He was arrested early November following weeks of a police manhunt for a sniper as shootings targeting immigrants intensified. He had a licence for two weapons and was described as a loner.

The incidents in Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city, bore chilling similarity to the case of a gunman who targeted immigrants in Stockholm in the early 1990s, dubbed “Laser Man.”

The Laser Man, John Ausonius, shot 11 people of immigrant origin, killing one, around Stockholm from August 1991 to January 1992. Ausonius, who got his nickname by initially using a rifle equipped with a laser sight, was jailed for life in 1994.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

SHOOTINGS

US criminologist lauds Malmö for anti-gang success

The US criminologist behind the anti-gang strategy designed to reduce the number of shootings and explosions in Malmö has credited the city and its police for the "utterly pragmatic, very professional, very focused" way they have put his ideas into practice.

US criminologist lauds Malmö for anti-gang success
Johan Nilsson/TT

In an online seminar with Malmö mayor Katrin Stjernfeldt Jammeh, David Kennedy, a professor at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said implementing his Group Violence Intervention (GVI) strategy had gone extremely smoothly in the city.

“What really stands out about the Malmö experience is contrary to most of the places we work,” he said. “They made their own assessment of their situation on the ground, they looked at the intervention logic, they decided it made sense, and then, in a very rapid, focused and business-like fashion, they figured out how to do the work.”

He said that this contrasted with police and other authorities in most cities who attempt to implement the strategy, who tend to end up “dragging their feet”, “having huge amounts of political infighting”, and coming up with reasons why their city is too different from other cities where the strategy has been a success.

Malmö’s Sluta Skjut (Stop Shooting) pilot scheme was extended to a three-year programme this January, after its launch in 2018 coincided with a reduction in the number of shootings and explosions in the city.

“We think it’s a good medicine for Malmö for breaking the negative trend that we had,” Malmö police chief Stefan Sintéus said, pointing to the fall from 65 shootings in 2017 to 20 in 2020, and in explosions from 62 in 2017 to 17 in 2020.

A graph from Malmö police showing the reduction in the number of shootings from 2017 to 2020. Graph: Malmö Police
A graph from Malmö police showing the reduction in the number of explosions in the city between 2017 and 2020. Graph: Malmö Police

READ ALSO: 

In their second evaluation of the programme, published last month, Anna-Karin Ivert, Caroline Mellgren, and Karin Svanberg, three criminologists from Malmö University, reported that violent crime had declined significantly since the program came into force, and said that it was possible that the Sluta Skjut program was partly responsible, although it was difficult to judge exactly to what extent. 

The number of shootings had already started to decline before the scheme was launched, and in November 2019, Sweden’s national police launched Operation Rimfrost, a six-month crackdown on gang crime, which saw Malmö police reinforced by officers from across Sweden.

But Kennedy said he had “very little sympathy” for criminologists critical of the police’s decision to launch such a massive operation at the same time as Sluta Skjut, making it near impossible to evaluate the programme.

“Evaluation is there to improve public policy, public policy is not there to provide the basis for for sophisticated evaluation methodology,” he argued.

“When people with jobs to do, feel that they need to do things in the name of public safety, they should follow their professional, legal and moral judgement. Not doing something to save lives, because it’s going to create evaluation issues, I think, is simply privileging social science in a way that it doesn’t deserve.”

US criminologist David Kennedy partaking in the meeting. Photo: Richard Orange

Sluta Skjut has been based around so-called ‘call-ins’, in which known gang members on probation are asked to attend meetings, where law enforcement officials warn them that if shootings and explosions continue, they and the groups around them will be subject to intense focus from police.

At the same time, social workers and other actors in civil society offer help in leaving gang life.

Of the 250-300 young men who have been involved in the project, about 40 have been sent to prison, while 49 have joined Malmö’s ‘defector’ programme, which helps individuals leave gangs.

Kennedy warned not to focus too much on the number of those involved in the scheme who start to work with social services on leaving gang life.

“What we find in in practice is that most of the impact of this approach doesn’t come either because people go to prison or because they take services and leave gang life,” he said.

“Most of the impact comes from people simply putting their guns down and no longer being violent.”

“We think of the options as continuing to be extremely dangerous, or completely turning one’s life around. That’s not realistic in practice. Most of us don’t change that dramatically ever in our lives.”

He stressed the importance of informal social control in his method, reaching those who gang members love and respect, and encouraging them to put pressure on gang members to abstain from gun violence.

“We all care more about our mothers than we care about the police, and it turns out that if you can find the guy that this very high risk, very dangerous person respects – literally, you know, little old ladies will go up to him and get his attention and tell him to behave himself. And he will.”

SHOW COMMENTS