Police: Swedish school attacker had 'racist motives'

The attacker who stabbed two people to death at a school in Sweden before being shot and killed by police had a racist motive, police said Friday.

Police labeled the stabbings in the industrial town of Trollhattan a hate crime based on discoveries they made when searching the perpetrator's home, the way he dressed, his behavior at the scene and the way he selected his victims.

"We are convinced that the assailant was driven by racist motives when he carried out the act," police chief Niclas Hallgren told Swedish public service radio.

"We have reached this conclusion based on what we found when we searched his apartment and his behavior during the act, and also on the basis of how he selected his victims."

A 21-year-old masked man, who has not been identified by police, entered the school in southern Sweden Thursday and stabbed four people, two of whom died, before he was shot by police. He later died of his wounds.

The attack stunned Sweden, where violent crime is relatively rare, though there has been a recent spate of arson attacks on asylum centers in the south of the country as the influx of migrants has surged. Immigration officials estimate that some 190,000 will arrive this year, second only to Germany in western Europe.

"This is a black day for Sweden," Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said Thursday of the attack, the deadliest ever to target a school in Sweden. "It is a tragedy that hits the entire country."

According to Swedish media, the assailant posed for photos with students before beginning his deadly rampage in the halls of the Kronan school in Trollhattan, which has a large immigrant community. A majority of the students at Kronan are foreign-born.

Many students thought the attacker was playing a Halloween prank. News outlets posted a photo of a black-clad man they identified as the attacker wearing a military-style helmet and a black mask with a sword in his hand.

Panicked students fled the school, as police and ambulances rushed in. They found a dead male teacher and three people seriously wounded — two boys, aged 11 and 15, and another male teacher. One of the students later died of his wounds. None of the victims have been identified.

Violent crime is rare in Sweden, which has strict gun-control laws. In 2013, there were 87 homicides reported in Sweden, a country of some 10 million people. The country's last school attack was in 1961, when a 17-year-old man opened fire at a school dance hall in the southwestern part of the country, wounding seven students, one of whom died later. 

Wire services