Örebro school shooting
On 4 February 2025, a school shooting occurred at Campus Risbergska, an adult education center in Örebro, Sweden. The shooter was identified as 35-year-old Rickard Andersson, who killed ten people and wounded six others before committing suicide. As of May 2025, the Swedish Police Authority appeared to close their investigation, stating the perpetrator likely targeted Campus Risbergska because he was previously enrolled there for some time, and that his attack was primarily motivated by suicidal thoughts. There was speculation that the attack was ideologically motivated, as most of the victims were immigrants, and it was early on, falsely, reported by Swedish TV4 that Andersson had supposedly made a racist statement during the shooting. This rumour by TV4 was later debunked by Swedish audio technicians and the Police and with the help of FBI experts it was ruled out as a false claim. The incident is the deadliest mass shooting in Swedish history, surpassing a 1994 spree shooting in Falun.
Background
is located in Örebro in central Sweden, and shares a campus with several other educational institutions. It occupies the premises of a former girls' school called Risbergska Gymnasium, which operated from 1863 to 2016, as well as a high school for students with disabilities. The present-day Campus Risbergska, which opened in 2017, is known as a komvux, a type of adult education centre in Sweden for people who have not completed primary or secondary school. At the time of the shooting, around 2,000 adult students were enrolled at the school. Notably, the school offers Swedish for immigrants courses, meaning a number of students and staff members were immigrants.Shooting
The perpetrator, Rickard Andersson, traveled to Campus Risbergska and arrived by bus at 07:45 CET, five hours before perpetrating the attack. Aftonbladet reported that the weapons were transported into the school inside a guitar case and in two bags. After arriving at the school, Andersson walked to a restroom and started preparing for the shooting. He would stay in the restroom for more than an hour, during which he changed into "military-style garb" consisting of a dark green T-shirt, black pants, boots, a knife sheath, and several pouches containing ammunition. He also removed items from his bags and guitar case, prepared his weapons, and took a mixture of amphetamine and caffeine.At 12:31, Andersson exited the restroom with his three guns, carrying the.30-06 Springfield Browning BAR in his hands. Upon exiting the restroom, Andersson came across a student and shot them at close range. He then went to an adjacent classroom and fired at the occupants inside as they tried running out the opposite door, fatally shooting six people and wounding a seventh.
After firing into the classroom, Andersson turned towards a corridor and fired at one of the exits. Around the same time, a person outside the school began filming him through the glass doors. Andersson then turned around and went to the school's main corridor, fatally shooting one person in a doorway leading to the corridor and wounding another in the corridor itself. Andersson moved north towards a classroom and fatally shot another person near an exit. He then set off two smoke grenades, which triggered the school's fire alarm, before proceeding to another corridor where he injured two people. Andersson then killed two more people near another exit—one in a classroom and one in the corridor—and set off a third smoke grenade before walking through the school building on an unknown path.
Two teachers at the school told Dagens Nyheter that they heard gunshots coming from a corridor, followed by silence for a half-hour, and then more shooting. Maria Pegado, a teacher at the school, recalled escaping with her 15 students after hearing gunfire. Ingela Bäck Gustafsson, the school's principal, was eating when students ran in and told everyone to evacuate; she and others took shelter in the staff room of Myrorna, a nearby second-hand store. Lena Warenmark, another teacher at the school, said that fewer than usual students were in the building at the time of the shooting since many had gone home following a national exam.
Law enforcement was called at around 12:33 and arrived six minutes later. The shooting was still ongoing during this time, and continued as police officers were searching the school building. At approximately 12:43, a squad of police officers were shot at by Andersson, who fired multiple rounds down the main corridor. None of the officers fired back at the gunman, who ran down the corridor from them before locking himself inside a classroom. While his exact actions after this point are mostly unknown, the investigation determined that at some point, Andersson separately fired two rounds—one from his shotgun and the other from his rifle—inside the classroom. He then sat against a wall and took out his knife to wound himself in the abdomen, before finally shooting himself in the head with his Browning BAR. His body was found by officers at 13:30, nearly an hour after the shooting started.
Andersson was determined to have fired 73 shots in total, including his suicide shot. All but one of the shots were fired from his Browning BAR, with the only other shot coming from his Mossberg shotgun. Andersson's third gun, the Ruger 10/22, was never used during the attack. All of his firearms were found near his body, along with ten empty magazines, 100 cartridges, and a large amount of unused ammunition.
Immediate response
Around 120 police officers were dispatched to the school following the shooting and soon cordoned off the area. Ambulances were sent from the neighbouring counties of Södermanland and Västmanland to assist medical personnel in Örebro, while Värmland sent blood donations. Police in Värmland and Dalarna also provided reinforcements.The Swedish Police Authority stated that the perpetrator had acted alone and confirmed that he had died in the attack. Örebro police chief Roberto Eid Forest said the shooter appeared to have killed himself. Police also confirmed the use of smoke grenades during the attack. Sveriges Radio, citing initial police investigations, stated that an automatic firearm had been used in the shooting.
Casualties
Eleven people, including the perpetrator, died in the attack. The fatalities consisted of seven women and three men, aged between 28 and 68 years old.Two Bosnian citizens from Tuzla, identified as Selma Hukić and an unnamed janitor, were confirmed to have been shot during the attack; Hukić was killed while the janitor was left injured, but not critically.
Two male Syrian Christian refugees were also confirmed to be among the fatalities. One of them was Salim Iskef, a 28-year-old Assyrian who had fled from ISIS and was part of Örebro's Assyrian community. He was due to get married in the summer and had called his fiancée after the shooting started, asking her to look after his mother. His funeral was held eight days later at a Syriac Orthodox parish.
Other fatalities included two women, an Eritrean and a Kurdish citizen of Iraq, who both worked at the school. Elsa Teklay, had immigrated to Sweden from Eritrea in 2015 and was a nursing student at the time. Three other fatalities were identified as citizens of Afghanistan, Iran and Somalia. Ali Mohammed Jafari, a 41-year-old man from Afghanistan, was training to be a janitor at the time of the shooting. Niloofar, the Iranian victim, was 42 years old and a nursing student. Two Swedes were also confirmed to be among the victims, but their identities have not yet been released.
Six people were taken to Örebro University Hospital, with five of them having life-threatening injuries due to gunshot wounds. Six police officers were treated for smoke inhalation due to the smoke produced by the smoke grenades that were set off by the perpetrator during the attack.
Perpetrator
35-year-old Rickard Andersson was identified as the shooter the day after the attack; police confirmed that he had acted alone.Andersson was born in Örebro and lived there his entire life. As a young child, he had a normal upbringing and was described as being happy and having many friends; however, his personality started to change around seventh grade, when he became reclusive and no longer wanted to go to school. He was homeschooled in ninth grade, and in high school, he was put in a special needs class for those with Asperger's syndrome and high-functioning autism. Andersson graduated in 2008 with "incomplete grades". In 2010, he completed a course at a folk high school, and in 2013 he enrolled in a mathematics course at Campus Risbergska, but did not start it immediately. He re-enrolled in the same course in 2019 but dropped out after two years, having failed to complete it.
Apart from a few internships, Andersson appears to have never had a job. Between 2009 and 2015, he received a disability benefit and, until 2022, some other income support. From that date, he lived on funds which had been saved in his name since he was a child. Despite his limited income, he never incurred any debts and always paid his rent ahead of time. He was described as someone who disliked socialising and was bad at communicating. He seemingly had no friends, with the police being unable to find anyone outside of his family who he had regular contact with. Andersson appeared to have taken good care of himself and ate healthily. While he had no prior criminal record, the subsequent investigation into the shooting uncovered several cryptocurrency transactions on a website that exclusively sells narcotics. In a locked wooden chest in his apartment, police found a laptop, a passport, 2,200 kronor in cash, a bank card reader, a wallet, and a toiletry bag.
In 2011, Andersson passed the necessary theory and practical tests to acquire a hunting certification, allowing him to obtain a firearms licence, which he used to buy four firearms, a Ruger 10/22, a Mossberg 590A1 and a Winchester 1300 ) and a gun safe. It is unknown why he acquired these weapons; those around Andersson later described this as being out of character for him, as he had never expressed any prior interest in firearms and was never a member of a shooting or hunting club. Prior to the shooting, Andersson sold or attempted to sell his personal belongings, researched how to clean firearms, bought ammunition and smoke grenades, and acquired the guitar case he would use to smuggle his weapons into the school.