The death toll from Saturday’s shooting in Kraków has risen to six, after one of the wounded died in hospital, Polish police said — and one of the officers hurt tackling the gunman is fighting for his life.
Four women and two men were killed and 15 people wounded when a gunman drove a car onto Rynek Główny, the Main Market Square in Poland’s second city, and opened fire at random shortly after 3pm local time on Saturday. The square, one of Europe’s largest medieval marketplaces, was crowded with tourists and families on a Saturday afternoon.
The first toll of five dead and more than a dozen wounded was reported in our earlier report on the attack, and police updated it as the injured were counted in hospitals across the city.
Police said the suspect was a 24-year-old Polish citizen who acted alone. He was wearing military-style clothing and carrying a long gun — a civilian version of the AR-15 assault rifle, police confirmed — and he held a firearms permit. Officers searching his car found many more weapons and a large quantity of ammunition. He was shot and wounded by police after an exchange of gunfire near the junction of Dietla and Stradomska streets, about half a mile from the square, and was taken to hospital under detention. Police denied media reports that they were looking for a second person.
Two police officers were among the wounded. One of them, hit by three bullets as officers moved in on the gunman, was in a very critical condition and undergoing surgery on Saturday night, Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński said. A tram driver escaped unhurt when a bullet from the shooter’s gun struck the tram and shattered the driver’s window.
Kraków’s mayor, Łukasz Gibała, declared a period of official mourning until 11 November. Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek said prosecutors were at the scene and the attacker would be “held fully accountable and severely punished”. Police have not released the suspect’s name and have not announced a motive. They have not said whether the attack is being treated as terror-related.
For Poland, the shooting is a shock of a kind the country rarely sees. Gun crime is uncommon there, and a random attack in the middle of one of the country’s most visited public spaces — a square that draws millions of tourists a year — has left the city in mourning and the country asking how a man with a firearms permit and a car full of weapons reached the heart of Kraków unchallenged. The answer to that question, and to what drove him, will shape the investigation in the days ahead — and, very likely, a debate about who in Poland is allowed to own a gun.
Poland has been on edge in recent weeks after a series of stabbings in October, and Saturday’s attack will intensify that unease. But the immediate picture is simpler and grimmer: six people went to a market square on a Saturday afternoon and did not come home, fifteen more are in hospital, and a police officer who ran towards the gunfire is fighting for his life. Kraków’s mourning, officially, runs until Tuesday. For the families of the dead, it will run a great deal longer.
For the full account of the attack as it unfolded, see our earlier report from Kraków’s Main Market Square. For another recent mass shooting in a school, see our report on the Oregon school shooting, in which the gunman was a 16-year-old using his mother’s shotgun.
