Racist motive behind Swedish school attack, police say, as hate crime probe opened

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 on Friday.

Police labelled the stabbing in the industrial town of Trollhattan a hate crime based on discoveries they made when searching the man’s home, the way he dressed, his behaviour at the scene and the way he selected his victims.

“All together, this gives a picture that the perpetrator had a racist motive when he committed the crimes at Kronan school,” police said.

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

Police said they had seized a car that the attacker could have used but declined to comment on a report in local tabloid GP that some kind of suicide note had been found.

The attack stunned Sweden, where violent crime is relatively rare, though there has been a recent spate of arson attacks on asylum centres in the south of the country as the influx of refugees 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 of the attack, the deadliest ever to target a school in Sweden. “It is a tragedy that hits the entire country.”