In October, panic suddenly spread in a sleepy small town in Norway: a man shot arrows and stabbed five people to death. Now he’s on trial.
At the beginning of the trial for the fivefold murder in Kongsberg, Norway, last October, the accused confessed to the crime.
The Norwegian radio reported on Wednesday. Equipped with a bow, arrow and stabbing weapons, the 38-year-old killed five people in the small town and injured three. All of the fatalities were stabbed, most in their own homes, according to police. Among the dead was a native German. In addition, the man is said to have thrown a knife at three police officers.
During the trial, the man justified his act with the wish for rebirth. “I had the idea that I have to kill in order to be reborn in a good place,” he said.
The public prosecutor demands that the man be placed in a psychiatric institution. “According to the experts, the defendant has been suffering from paranoid schizophrenia since 2007,” said the prosecutor. He was also mentally ill during the act in mid-October and was therefore unsound.
In the courtroom, prosecutors played surveillance video footage of the attacker shooting customers with a bow and arrow in a supermarket. A customer had holed up in the supermarket garage and alerted the emergency call. “Hide, hide!” he called to another customer during the call, as a recording of the conversation showed. “He tried to shoot me!” reported a woman who had also called 911.
