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Woman shot in new Gothenburg attack

Police say a woman is in hospital following a shooting outside an adult education complex in the Gårda area of Gothenburg, less than a week after two men were shot dead at a restaurant in the city.

Published: 24 March 2015 17:02 CET
Woman shot in new Gothenburg attack
Police investigating the shooting on Tuesday afternoon. Photo: TT
Emergency services were called to the scene in the east of the city just after 2.20pm on Tuesday afternoon.
 
Police told the TT news agency shortly afterwards that it was not clear how seriously the woman had been injured, but that she remained in hospital.
 
But a witness told Sweden's Aftonbladet newspaper that they had seen "blood flowing and people around [the area] were in a panic". The bystander added that they had seen a man crying next to the victim.
 
The shooting took place just outside two adult education centres and the witness – a male student – added that he and his classmates had rushed outside to see what was going on.
 
"She just lay there on the ground. Opposite our school is a medical training centre, so a few nurses and one doctor came from school with towels and tried to stop the bleeding," he said.
 
The witness was understood to be a pupil at Lernia Vuxensgymnasium, an adult education centre which teaches Swedish as a foreign language, as well as vocational courses.
 
The area around the street where the shooting took place (Anders Personsgatan) was cordoned off and police were carrying out a forensic examination of the site on Tuesday evenning.
 
The shooting took place a week after a deadly attack in Biskopsgården, a different suburb in the west of the city and police were quick to suggest that they did not think the events were linked.
 
"There is currently no evidence to suggest that this would have something with gang conflicts", Jenny Widen, a spokesperson for Gothenburg police told TT.
 
A suspect has been arrested.
 

CRIME

Tech giants promise ‘action plan’ on stopping Nordic gangs using apps for crime

The tech giants Google, Meta, Snapchat and TikTok have pledged to give details "within months" on how they will prevent gang leaders in Nordic countries using their products to carry out serious crimes, Denmark's justice minister said on Friday.

Published: 20 September 2024 16:11 CEST
Tech giants promise 'action plan' on stopping Nordic gangs using apps for crime

After meeting the companies along with other Nordic Justice Ministers in Uppsala, Sweden, Hummelgaard and Swedish counterpart Gunnar Strömmer said he now expected the companies to submit an “action plan” to crack down on the use of their apps to recruit young people to carry our shootings and commit other crimes. 

“I would like it to contain concrete steps on how to use the technology on the platforms to remove and screen content that helps to facilitate organised crime to a greater extent,” Hummelgaard said, while Strömmer said that although he was pleased an important step had been taken it “remains to be seen” how seriously the companies take the issue. 

READ ALSO: Danish gangs’ use of Swedish child hitmen is now a diplomatic issue

Ministers from Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Greenland met to discuss gang crime, which in recent months has increasingly been shown to cross national borders, with criminals from Sweden travelling to Denmark to carry out shootings and hand grenade attacks.

According to Hummelgaard, there have been “many examples” of gangs using social media and encrypted messaging services to plan serious crimes and recruit new criminals, with lists of the payments available for carrying out various criminal services  found circulating  on social media. 

“The way I see it, political patience is about to run out, not just in the Nordic countries, but in large parts of the Western world,” Hummelgaard said.

He said the four companies had made “a really good first step” in pledging to establish a “joint Nordic cooperation forum”, where they would exchange experience and share information with each other about the use of their products in the region for crime. But he said he wanted them to be “more concrete than that”. 

READ ALSO: Nordic justice ministers meet tech giants on gangs hiring ‘child soldiers’

Hummelgaard said that he tech giants had also asked that the police authorities in the Nordic countries to provide information on what kind of “groupings and names” are using their services and how “they communicate”, so that the content can “be removed immediately”. 

“I sense that they have a clear desire and will to cooperate with us. I think that is positive,” he said. “I would also like to say that until today this has not been the experience of many of our law enforcement authorities around the Nordic countries.” 

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