The ongoing spiral of violence is linked to gang crime. In the past week, four shootings have occurred in Uppsala alone, two of them fatal. One of the dead was a woman in her 60s, the mother of a gang criminal man. The other was a 25-year-old man – and according to media reports, not the intended target of the shots.
“A relative of a gang criminal and a young man on his way to work have been shot dead in Uppsala,” says Thornberg.
International crimes
In addition, two people have been killed in the Stockholm area this week, one of them a 13-year-old boy who, according to TV4 Nyheternas, had been shot.
He emphasizes that gang violence is of an international nature. That those who order the murders are abroad.
Thornberg says that they work more preventively and have averted several “planned or ongoing” violent crimes.
“Last night we arrested two criminal individuals who were about to commit serious acts of violence,” he says.
Serious situation
Ulf Johansson, regional police chief in region Mitt, which includes Uppsala, says that the situation in the city is “very serious” and that several people have been arrested and a “large number of weapons” seized.
— We are gathering strength to get at the criminal actors who order these, often young, individuals, says Hampus Nygårds, deputy head of the National Operative Department (Noa).