The shooting in Hafnarfjörður: Six-year-old boy and his father were inside one of the cars

This morn­ing, there was a shooting in Hafn­ar­fjörður, on the street Mið­vangur. It was orig­inally reported that a man had shot at a stationary car, parked in a park­ing lot between a res­idential build­ing and a kind­erg­ar­ten.

Police’s special forces were at the scene quickly and at around 8 am their num­bers had increased, and they wore bulletproof vests. Soon, the special forces had entered the apart­ment build­ing from where the shots had been fired. The suspect lives in the apart­ment from where the shots were allegedly fired.

The kind­erg­ar­ten Víði­vellir was closed during the operations. Seventeen children and twenty-one employees were alr­eady pres­ent at the school when the siege began this morn­ing. The children’s parents were alerted about the situation and assured that they were all safe inside during the siege. Parents that had yet to bring their kids to the school were asked to remain at home. During the siege, routes both to and from the kind­erg­ar­ten were sealed.

About four hours later, at around 12:20 pm, the suspected shooter sur­rend­ered to police and was arre­sted and brought in for questioning. Soon after that, it was reported that he had in fact shot at two cars, not one, as was beli­eved to be the case this morn­ing. Moreover, the second car had not been vacant at all. At first, reports stated that a man had in fact been inside the vehicle when it was shot at. A little later, it was revealed that he had not been alone, but had his six-year-old son in the car with him. App­arently, he had been dropp­ing his son off to the kind­erg­ar­ten when the shots hit the car. The man said that he was in great shock, when Vísir spoke to him. He wanted to remain anonymous and chose not to comment any further. The man does not know the shooter and does not live on the street. The fact that they were shot at seems to be coincident.

Luckily, nobody was injured. It is however clear that things could have tur­ned out much worse.

According to police, the suspect was to be inter­rogated today, as official investigation into the shooting commences. The shooting is being investigated as an attempted murder.