“A man in his 40s and two young men” were among the victims, Copenhagen police chief Soren Tomassen said at a press conference early Monday morning.
Thomassen said the young Dane was arrested “undramatically” in connection with the shooting and is currently the only suspect.
“We are confident that the 22-year-old suspect who was arrested was the shooter, and he was carrying a rifle and ammunition,” he said, adding that investigators “believe the suspect may not be working with others, but will not rule that out until they are absolutely sure.”
Thomassen said police arrested the suspect thirteen minutes after receiving the first 911 call about the shooting.
Witness Joachim Olsen, a former Danish politician and athlete, told CNN that he saw large groups of people leaving the mall as he walked to the gym inside Field’s.
“It looked like, I’m sorry, like something you’d see in a school shooting in the United States, people with their hands over their heads,” Olsen said.
“You have people running inside, looking for friends and calling friends and family inside and some talking to friends inside,” he said. “Old men with their arms around the necks of those who lead them, their feet just crawling on the ground.”
Outside the mall, Olsen spoke to a man who spoke to an off-duty paramedic whose arms were “bloodied up to his elbows.”
“He wanted to go back, but the police wouldn’t let him,” Olsen said.
According to Olsen, security personnel tried to keep the crowd away from the mall.
“At one point they shot us. The police came and said run, run, run, they are still shooting there.”
A spokesperson for Rigshospitalet, Denmark’s largest hospital, told CNN that the hospital had received several victims and had called in additional staff to deal with the emergency.
A hotline has been opened for victims, and police said they have created a central location where witnesses can get support and report their experiences to law enforcement.
“We are all wildly torn from the bright summer that has just begun. It’s incomprehensible. It’s heartbreaking. It’s senseless. Our beautiful and usually so safe capital has been changed in a split second,” Frederiksen said.
“Our thoughts and deepest condolences go out to the victims, their relatives and all those affected by the tragedy,” the Danish Royal House said in a statement.
The President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, also expressed her solidarity with the Danish people.
Journalist Susanne Gargiulo reported from Copenhagen.
