Swedish police have arrested a teenager following a deadly barber shop shooting that saw three people die as they got their hair cut.
The Tuesday shooting in the city of Uppsala, around 40 miles north of the country’s capital, saw three young men, aged between 15 and 20, get shot in the head by a gunman who police have confirmed is just 16 years old.
Local media reported that a masked man chased one of the victims into the barber shop, before shooting him and two others to death.
Two of the men were still wearing barbershop capes when they died.
The gunman is said to have fled the scene of the attack on an electric scooter.
Police are yet to reveal the identity of the alleged attacker, and added that they haven’t ‘100%’ confirmed the identities of all the victims.
Swedish media has reported that local cops are investigating the possibility that the attack was related to spiralling gang violence in the nation.
One of the people who died in the attack was reportedly known to police, as he was involved in the investigation of a planned attack on a relative of local gang leader Ismail Abdo.
Swedish police have arrested a teenager following a deadly barber shop shooting that saw three people die as they got their hair cut
Police investigate the scene of a shooting on April 29, 2025 in Uppsala, Sweden
Police are yet to reveal the identity of the alleged attacker, and added that they haven’t ‘100%’ confirmed the identities of all the victims
Abdo, whose nickname is ‘The Strawberry’, is reportedly a well-known figure in Uppsala’s gangland.
His mother was murdered in her home in the city in 2023, which sparked a dark and violent chapter in gang violence in the country.
While police said they believed this to be an ‘isolated incident’ that did not pose any further danger to the public, Swedish criminologist Manne Gerell said: ‘The risk of retaliation is high after an incident like this.
‘Then there could be new shootings in the near future, and when there are new shootings, there is always a small risk to the public.
‘In general, in the criminal world, it is important to defend yourself, to maintain your violent capital. People will be angry and want revenge.’
In recent years, Sweden has been hit by a massive wave of teenage gang violence.
In response, the country’s government has proposed giving cops new powers to wiretap children under 15 to further investigations.
Sweden’s justice minister Gunnar Strömmer said in a separate, pre-planned press conference that police wouldn’t need concrete evidence to justify wiretaps.
Police said they believed this to be an ‘isolated incident’ that did not pose any further danger to the public
In recent years, Sweden has been hit by a massive wave of teenage gang violence
Three people were killed and several injured at a hair salon before the shooter fled on a scooter
While he acknowledged that this may massively breach the privacy of those under investigation, Strömmer said that these powers were necessary to prevent young children from being recruited into gangs.
The shooting came on the evening of the Walpurgis spring festival, which was expected to draw large crowds to Uppsala.
The festival in the university town normally sees students washing down herring breakfasts with champagne, before racing each other on rafts on the river.
While local police chief Åsa Larsson said that people shouldn’t change their plans, she urged visitors to contact police if they saw anything suspicious.
Swedish gangs are increasingly recruiting children to carry out contract killings, authorities have warned, with the country being overrun by a ‘gig economy of gang violence’ in recent months.
The Nordic nation has the worst rate of gun violence in the EU, while the number of murder cases involving children more than tripled from 31 counts in the first eight months of 2023 to 102 in the same period of this year, according to authorities.
Youngsters are lured by recruiters on social media platforms such as Snapchat and Telegram, with group chats titled ‘bombing today’ and ‘who wants to shoot someone in Stockholm’ reportedly attracting thousands of members.
The children – who are often vulnerable and from poor backgrounds – are promised quick cash, with bounties of up to £13,000 offered for a successful hit.
Three teenagers were sentenced after a man was murdered while eating dinner at a restaurant south of Stockholm last March, with the 17-year-old who is believed to have fired the fatal shot handed a jail term
The bloody nighty worn by a two-year-old girl when she was shot in the stomach
Gunshots pictured following the attack, apparently designed to scare the ex-girlfriend of a rapper
Once signed up, the young recruits carry out gang bosses’ dirty work, assassinating relatives of rival gangsters and other targets, often without ever meeting the person who is ordering the killing.
Crime bosses increasingly seek out children under 15 as they are too young to be prosecuted in Sweden, according to police, with a boy aged just 11 years old reportedly involved in a recent case.
Children travelling across the country to commit the crimes for cash is becoming ‘the new normal’, Erik Lindblad, head of the police’s gang violence taskforce, warned in November.
He said that online chat groups were advertising jobs to ‘tens of thousands’ of young members, inviting them to volunteer to carry out a hit.
Gangs have increasingly sought out young girls and children with mental disabilities to carry out the killings, as they believe they are less likely to be suspected by their target.
They deliberately hire children as Swedish law dictates that under-15s cannot be prosecuted, a law which critics say is in urgent need of reform.
Confronted by the increased involvement of young people in violent gang crime, prosecutors are increasingly seeking imprisonment rather than ‘closed care’ for child suspects, according to Swedish media.
