Teenager arrested after two shot dead

TWO people were shot dead and several others wounded when a gunman opened fire from a rooftop in a Finland town centre yesterday.

An 18-year-old man was arrested after the shooting spree in the town of Hyvinkaa, 34 miles north of Finland’s capital, Helsinki.

The motive for the shooting was unclear.

It followed a series of similar incidents in Finland in recent years and came less than a year after anti-immigrant gunman Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people in a rampage in neighbouring Norway.

The suspect had no criminal background and police said it was probable that he had acted alone.

Police could not comment on whether or not he knew any of his victims.

Both of the dead were 18 years old. One was male and one female.

Seven others were wounded. One, a policewoman, was in a critical condition last night.

Local reports said some of the victims, including one of the dead, were members of a Finnish baseball team, Hyvinkaan Tahko, which had won a game on Friday.

Police regional chief inspector Timo Leppala said the shootings were first reported before 2am. The suspect fled but was detained a few hours later.

Police said they later recovered two rifles.

Finland has one of the highest gun ownership rates in the world, and a series of mass shootings prompted the government to toughen its gun laws last June.

Shootings are not uncommon in Finland, where there are 650,000 officially recognised gun owners in a population of 5.4 million people with strong hunting traditions.

The suspect in yesterday’s case did not have a gun licence, police said.

In recent years, Finland has experienced two deadly school shootings.

In 2008, a 22-year-old catering student killed nine fellow students and a teacher before shooting himself at a cook school in the western town of Kauhajoki.

A year earlier, an 18-year-old killed six fellow students, a nurse and the principal at a high school in Tuusula, southern Finland.

After those deadly attacks, the authorities took steps to improve safety at schools, including installing surveillance cameras and locks on classroom doors, and training staff to deal with such incidents.

Two months ago, a 23-year-old gunman wounded the father of his former girlfriend in an office building before firing several shots through a classroom door in southern Finland.

No-one was hurt at the junior high school, and the attacker quickly surrendered.

In December 2009, a man shot four people dead in a shopping mall in Espoo after knifing his former girlfriend to death. The man later killed himself.