Poland was in shock on Sunday, a day after a gunman opened fire in Krakow, killing six people and wounding 15 before police shot and wounded him. Authorities say the attacker held far-right views, though they did not say whether he belonged to any organised extremist group. Prosecutors are investigating the shooting as a terrorist offence.
Police have also found the bodies of the suspect’s parents and sister at the family home. The attack is being described as a grim first in modern-day Poland.
Police say the 24-year-old attacker, wearing military-style clothing and a bulletproof vest, drove into a crowd on the city’s Main Square and opened fire. The square, in Krakow’s Old Town, is a major tourist destination in Poland’s second-largest city. Witnesses described fleeing into nearby shops. British visitor Neil Thaxton said employees ushered him and his wife into the back of a gift shop, locked the doors and switched off the lights. They survived unharmed.
Marie-Ange Collaer, visiting from Brussels with her family, wrote on Facebook that they ran for their lives and “managed to hide from the bullets.” Videos posted on social media show people running from the square into nearby streets and first responders trying to resuscitate victims. Krakow police spokesperson Katarzyna Cisło said the attacker continued firing even after police officers wounded him.
Four women and two men were killed in the square. Regional governor Krzysztof Klęczar said on Sunday that four of the dead were Polish. The other two were a British man and a woman from a foreign country that officials had not yet named. The wounded included people from Britain, Portugal, Russia, Germany and Austria.
Two police officers who stopped the attacker and were wounded in the shootout remained in hospital on Sunday. One was still in a coma; the other had regained consciousness, Klęczar said. Officials appealed for blood donations to help the more seriously wounded officer.
After the shooting, authorities paused St. Mary’s Trumpet Call overnight in tribute to the victims. The traditional five-note melody is played every hour from the highest tower of St. Mary’s Basilica on Main Square. It was the first time the call has been missed since the Second World War.
The attacker, a 24-year-old Polish national, remained in critical condition on Sunday after several operations. Police have not released his name. Interior minister Marcin Kierwiński described his views as radical and ultranationalist and said evidence indicated a fascination with far-right ideologies. Prosecutors opened an investigation into murder and attempted murder, including attacks on police officers, constituting a terrorist offence.
At the suspect’s home in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski, about 150 kilometres (93 miles) northeast of Krakow, authorities said they found three bodies. Police identified them as the suspect’s mother, father and sister, and said the three likely died from gunshot wounds.
Police found four firearms at the scene, recovered from the attacker or from his car. Klęczar said the attacker’s father legally owned more than 10 guns and that the attacker also owned firearms. Local officials said seven weapons were also seized from the family home, bringing the total recovered to 11.
A shooting club where the attacker is believed to have trained said on Sunday that it offered only “static shooting,” firing from a fixed position at a stationary target. The suspect, it said, “was never trained in our club in the areas of dynamic, tactical or combat shooting.”
Mass shootings are uncommon in Poland, a country of 37 million people where about 411,000 people hold gun permits. Interest in gun ownership has been rising. Kacper Rekawek, a researcher at the International Center for Counterterrorism in The Hague, said the attack resembled far-right lone-wolf incidents in Europe in recent years.