Kraków shooting suspect dies in hospital after killing six in Main Square
A 24-year-old Polish man who opened fire in Kraków's Main Square, killing six and wounding 15, has died in hospital. Three more bodies were found at his home in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski.
Kraków attacker dies hours after deadly Main Square shooting
The 24-year-old Polish man suspected of opening fire on the public in Kraków's Main Square has died in hospital, the Lesser Poland police announced on X in the early hours of Sunday, euronews.com reports. The attack killed six people — four Polish citizens, one British national and one Austrian national — and left 15 others injured, including two police officers.
Krzysztof Klęczar, the Lesser Poland voivode and regional head, confirmed the death on Polish 24/7 news channel TVN24. "At 4:30, the perpetrator of the attack died; he died in one of Krakow's hospitals," he said. Klęczar added that the condition of the 15 remaining injured, spread across six Kraków hospitals, was unchanged.
The attacker had exchanged fire with police before being wounded, detained and taken to hospital, where doctors had described his condition as critical.
The suspect was a resident of Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski in the Świętokrzyskie region, north of Kraków. He had no prior convictions and was not known to authorities. He held a valid firearms licence, and police reported he most likely fired shots using one of the weapons covered by that permit.
Authorities said the man had been "fascinated by far-right ideologies". Prime Minister Donald Tusk described the attack — the deadliest in Poland since the end of communism in 1989 — as an act of "terrorism".
Following the shooting, police officers searched the flat occupied by the suspect and discovered the bodies of three people: a 53-year-old man, a 52-year-old woman and a 21-year-old woman. Investigators established that all three were the attacker's closest family members — his parents and his sister.
Junior inspector Kamil Tokarski, spokesperson for the Świętokrzyskie police, said officers had identified what appeared to be gunshot wounds on all three bodies. "The cause and nature of death will be clarified. The bodies have been secured for detailed examinations," Tokarski said.
Autopsies of the six victims killed in Kraków and of the three people found dead in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski are due to begin on Monday morning, in line with announcements from the prosecutor's office. Prosecutor Eryk Stasielak of the National Prosecutor's Office said the examinations could take around two days, given the nature and extent of the gunshot wounds.
Investigators currently believe the same individual was responsible for both the Kraków attack and the deaths in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski. The precise sequence of events in Kraków and the circumstances surrounding the deaths of the suspect's family members are still being clarified.
Source: Google News IE — Crime (en)