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TROLLHÄTTAN

Trollhättan remembers school attack victims

Hundreds of people on Saturday turned out for a torchlight procession in the small town of Trollhättan in southwestern Sweden to honour the victims of last year’s deadly school attack there.

Trollhättan remembers school attack victims
'It was an attack on all of Sweden,' Education Minister Gustav Fridolin said. Photo: Thomas Johansson/ TT

Three people were killed in an attack that shocked Sweden as a masked, sword-wielding assailant entered the school, stabbing students and teachers who appeared to be of foreign origin. Several people were also injured. The attacker, 21-year-old Anton Lundin Pettersson, was then shot dead by police.

“It was an attack on all of Sweden,” Education Minister Gustav Fridolin said as the procession ended outside the school.

In the week running up to the one-year anniversary, students of the school had made thousands of postcards in memory of the teacher, pupil and teacher aide who were killed in the assault.

A police investigation has showed that Lundin had planned the attack, which lasted around 10 minutes, after being inspired by racist websites.

A teenage student told The Local at the time that many people at the school at first thought it was some kind of a prank.

“I was in a classroom with my class when one of my classmates’ sisters called her to warn her that there was a murderer at the school. So we locked the door to the classroom, but our teacher was still outside in the corridor.”

“We wanted to warn him, so a few of us went outside and then I saw the murderer, he was wearing a mask and had a sword. Our teacher got stabbed.”

“The murderer started chasing me, I ran into another classroom. If I had not run, I would have been murdered. I’m feeling really scared. Everyone’s scared here.”

Trollhättan is an industrial town with around 50,000 residents.

MISSING

Trollhättan suspect to be extradited to Sweden

A Polish court ruled on Friday that the 36-year-old man who turned himself in over the murder of a mother-of-two in Trollhättan, western Sweden, should be extradited to Sweden.

Trollhättan suspect to be extradited to Sweden

The man is suspected of murdering a 23-year-old woman, who has been missing since June 30th in the western Swedish town, roughly 75 kilometres north of Gothenburg.

“We can confirm that on Monday we detained a Swedish man who was being searched for internationally by Swedish police,” Mariusz Sokolowski of the national Polish police force told the Aftonbladet newspaper.

“This occurred in the Swedish embassy in Warsaw. We came there at the request of the embassy.”

He added that the case was taken as seriously in Poland as it is in Sweden.

IN PICTURES: Police and the Missing People volunteers join the search

The 36-year-old suspect had been detained before in Sweden on suspicion of kidnapping, while two younger men were detained for aiding a criminal. He will be back on Swedish shores within ten days.

The hunt for the woman’s body has been extensive, involving police divers and hundreds of members of the volunteer Missing People organization. Her body is still missing.

TT/The Local/

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