The gunman who killed six people in Kraków’s Main Market Square on Saturday has died in hospital, Polish police have said, two days after officers shot him in the square.
Regional police in Małopolska announced the death early on Monday morning. “We would like to inform you that the perpetrator of the tragic events died in hospital early this morning,” the force wrote on X. The 24-year-old had been in a critical condition since Saturday afternoon, when armed officers shot him within minutes of the attack beginning.
His death closes the immediate police operation around Poland’s deadliest shooting since the fall of communism — but it also means there will be no trial. The investigation into what drove him will now have to proceed without him.
Saturday: three minutes in the square
The attack began shortly after 3pm local time on Saturday, in the Rynek Gówny — the Main Market Square at the heart of Kraków’s Old Town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Police say a man drove into the square and opened fire at random from his car. The shooting lasted about three minutes.
Six people were killed in the square: four women and two men. Among them were three Polish women aged 61, 53 and 51, a 50-year-old Polish man, a 32-year-old British man, and a 51-year-old woman whose nationality had not yet been confirmed. At least 15 more people were wounded, 12 of them seriously, according to the fire service and the regional governor.
Two police officers, Senior Constables Jakub Kulik and Artur Morański, confronted the gunman and shot him. Kulik was seriously injured and remains in a critical condition; police have issued an urgent appeal for blood donations for him.
Three more bodies, 200 kilometres away
Hours later, police searched the suspect’s home in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski, about 200 kilometres from Kraków. Inside the flat they found three bodies: a 53-year-old man, a 52-year-old woman and a 21-year-old woman. Police have since confirmed they were the gunman’s father, mother and sister, and investigators believe he killed them before driving to Kraków.
Polish media have identified the suspect only as Michał O., a 24-year-old, in line with Polish rules that protect suspects’ surnames. In total, nine people were killed by him across the two locations.
A terrorism investigation — and no trial now
Poland’s National Prosecutor’s Office has formally opened an investigation into the killings, handling them as a single case classified as an act of a terrorist nature. On Sunday, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said there were “strong indications” the three people found at the home were members of the gunman’s immediate family, and he left no doubt about how the government views the attack. “We have never had such drastic cases of terrorism in Poland before, because that is how we should call the attack in Krakow,” he said.
Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński said investigators believed the gunman was influenced by far-right ideology and held extreme nationalist views. “Everything points to the fact that the shooter was influenced by far-right ideology, a matter that will also be subject to investigation,” he told reporters.
President Karol Nawrocki declared national mourning for Sunday and Monday. Pope Leo XIV sent his condolences to Kraków’s archbishop.
Post-mortem examinations on all nine victims were due to begin on Monday morning. Police say the gunman held a firearms permit, and local media have reported that the guns used may have been taken from his family home; many weapons and ammunition were found in his vehicle. How a 24-year-old with no known military service assembled such an arsenal — and what exactly drove him — is now the centre of the investigation, and it will have to be answered without him.
Why this matters
Poland has not experienced a mass shooting of this kind in living memory, and the fact that the government is already calling it terrorism — before the motive is established — shows how seriously Warsaw is taking the far-right angle. The attack also lands in a Europe where lone-actor violence inspired by extremist ideology online has become a recurring fear for security services.
For Kraków, a city whose medieval square is one of Europe’s great tourist draws, the shock is also practical: a place built for crowds must now ask how it protects them. The gunman’s death ends the manhunt phase. The harder part — understanding how it happened, and whether it could have been stopped — is only beginning.
Our earlier reporting: the toll’s first revision is covered in our update as the death toll rose to six, and the full picture in our report as the toll reached nine and prosecutors opened a terror investigation.
Sources: Małopolska Police · Polish Ministry of the Interior and Administration
