Norway bow-and-arrow attack likely due to mental illness, police say

The man who killed five people with a bow-and-arrow and other weapons in Norway was probably suffering from mental illness, police are now saying on Friday.

"The hypothesis that has been strengthened the most in the first days of the investigation is that the background is mental illness," police inspector Per Thomas Omholt told a news conference.

The attacker went on a half-hour rampage in the town of Kongsberg on Wednesday, assaulting people in the streets and forcing his way into houses and a supermarket. Police arrested a suspect the same day — 37-year-old Espen Andersen Braathen, a Danish citizen who has lived in Kongsberg for most of his life.

Omholt said Braathen had acknowledged killing the victims but had not pleaded guilty. He said the suspect was being held in a locked "psychiatric institution" and other lines of inquiry were still being pursued.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere, who took office a day after the attacks in Kongsberg, also visited the town and placed flowers at a memorial site for the victims on Friday.

For more info, please go to https://globalnews.ca/news/8268912/norway-community-horror-of-bow-arrow-attack/

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