Pettersson, 21, dressed as a samurai assassin in a darth vader style outfit for his murder spree
Swedish high school killer Anton Lundin Pettersson, 21, dressed as a samurai assassin in a darth vader style outfit when he attacked teachers and students with a sword in Trollhättan, Sweden in October 2015.
CCTV showed Pettersson, 21, dressed as a samurai assassin in a darth vader style outfit marching around the corridors of Kronan school with a samurai sword searching for more victims.
Pictures from the school CCTV emerged following a Swedish Police investigation which discovered he acted alone and it was a planned racist hate crime after he left a hand-written note in which he writes he “has to do something about the immigration politics in Sweden”.
Pettersson managed to stop and pose for a picture during his murder spree with two unsuspecting students who thought it was a Halloween joke before he carried on killing. He used a sword to kill a student and a teacher and injured another teacher and a student. He was shot and killed by police when they arrived on the scene.
Trollhättan school attack
On 22 October 2015, Anton Lundin Pettersson attacked Kronan School in Trollhättan, Sweden, with a sword. He killed a teaching assistant and a male student, stabbed another male student and a teacher, and died later of the gunshot wounds he received during his apprehension. The second teacher who was wounded died in hospital six weeks after the attack, on 3 December.
The attack was Sweden’s first deadly attack on a school since the 1961 Kungälv school shooting when one person was killed and six injured. It is also the deadliest attack on a school in Swedish history.
The initial police investigation concluded that Pettersson was motivated by racism and had chosen the school as his target due to its location in a neighbourhood with a high immigrant population.
The murders
Pettersson entered the school in a German World War II helmet and a mask similar to either that of Star Wars villain Darth Vadar or those worn by police in Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade. At first, eyewitnesses believed it was a Halloween prank. Pettersson immediately attacked 20-year-old teaching assistant Lavin Eskandar. Eskandar, a Feyli Kurd from Iraq, was stabbed and died at the scene.
Pettersson then stabbed the abdomen of Ahmed Hassan, a 15-year-old born in Somalia. Hassan died in the hospital. After that, while wandering the halls, Pettersson posed with two students who thought he was playing a prank, and took a picture of Pettersson with blood dripping from his sword. Shortly after, when 42-year-old teacher Nazir Amso asked Pettersson to remove his mask, Amso was stabbed. He died six weeks later at the hospital. At 10.16 a.m., Pettersson was shot by police. He died in the hospital.
On the morning of 23 October, Swedish police and media confirmed that the motive behind the attack had “racist motives” and that it was a “hate crime”. Niclas Hallgren, the city’s police chief, stated that all of the victims were “dark-skinned”. Head of investigation Thord Haraldsson said that CCTV footage showed that Pettersson spared the lives of students with white skin.
Nazir Amso, the mathematics teacher who was stabbed, died of his injuries in hospital on 3 December, at the age of 42.
Pettersson’s background
Anton Niclas Lundin Pettersson (22 June 1994 – 22 October 2015) was identified as the attacker at 20:00 CET (18:00 GMT) by Swedish newspaper Expressen. According to Aftonbladet, another Swedish paper, the perpetrator had visited right-wing extremist groups at social media sites supporting Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. He had also joined a group on Facebook that wants to stop immigration to Sweden. The Swedish Security Service were called in to investigate these findings.
Pettersson had no criminal record and was not a member of any political organization, but had supported a petition by the Sweden Democrats to initiate a referendum on immigration. He left a handwritten note at his home in which he declared that something had to be done about immigration, and that he did not expect to survive his spree.
Pettersson graduated from Lichron Teknikgymnasium with a diploma in technology. He lived in an apartment in the neighborhood of Stavre, but chose to attack the Kronan School in Kronogården, where there are more immigrants; police cited this as more evidence towards his motive. Former classmates described the perpetrator as a lonely person who “lived in his own world” and always dressed in black clothes influenced either by the emo or rock scene.
Bjørn Ihler, a survivor of Norwegian far-right extremist Anders Behring Breivik’s terror attacks in 2011, wrote in The Guardian that in 2013, Pettersson had “liked” a YouTube video of former Ku Klux Klan leader Johnny Lee Clary testifying how a positive experience with a black man had caused him to disavow his previously-held beliefs.
After the attack
Prime Minister Stefan Löfven travelled to Trollhättan after news of the attack, calling it a “black day” for the country. Interior Minister Anders Ygeman wrote on Twitter, “It is with sadness and dismay I received the news of the attack on the school in Trollhättan. My thoughts go to the victims and their families”. King Carl XVI Gustaf said that the royal family received the news “with great dismay and sadness”.
In the days following the attack, there were reports of people wearing suspicious outfits or brandishing weapons, which were discovered to be people celebrating Halloween. The police warned the public not to carry imitation weapons with their Halloween costumes, in order to avoid potentially dangerous misunderstandings.
The school remained closed until 2 November, when it reopened with higher security. An Afghan father told The Local that he wished to leave the neighbourhood for his family’s safety.
On 29 September 2017, the first book about the school attack was published: Det som aldrig fick ske. The book contains completely new facts, for example a secret suicide note that the police and the Pettersson family did not know existed. In the book the brother of Anton Lundin Pettersson speaks out for the first time.
The author Åsa Erlandsson 2017 won the Stora Journalistpriset (the finest prize in journalism in Sweden) for the book.
