A semi-naked knifeman has stabbed a police officer in the streets of Oslo before being shot dead by cops – a year after he committed the same crime and was sectioned.
Police initially suggested that passers-by had been wounded, but later said that only one police officer was slightly hurt.
Footage showed a police patrol car driving into a building in the Bislett neighbourhood of northern Oslo to stop the man.
The semi-naked man, thought to be in his 30s, then attacked the vehicles and managed to open the car door before being shot, police spokesman Torgeir Brenden said.
‘Several shots’ were fired at the man, he added, without specifying whether it was the police officers in the car who opened fire. Brenden said the perpetrator was rushed to a nearby hospital where he died.
The knifeman was convicted in December 2020 for another semi-naked knife attack in Grunerlokka, Oslo, and was sectioned for compulsory mental health care.
Norwegian media today published footage of the alleged attacker, naked from the waist up and wielding a knife.
‘We have so far no information that this is terror-related,’ Senior Police Chief Egil Joergen Brekke told a news conference.
‘To us, this appears to be a stand-alone act, so that there is no reason to fear for the safety of the city for others. This is a person who is known to us in the past and who has a history,’ Brekke told reporters.
The first reports to the police shortly before 9 am were about a man with a knife running after another person, Brekke said.
A nearby patrol car in the Bislett neighborhood of northern Oslo rushed to the scene and first tried to stop the man by running him down before it drove into a building between a flower shop and a cafe to halt the man’s progress.
The man managed to open the car door before ‘several shots’ were fired. Norwegian media said up to six shots were heard, citing witnesses.
Brekke could not give detailed information, saying the Norwegian Bureau for the Investigation of Police Affairs is probing the events – which is customary in Norway when police officers use firearms.
‘To my knowledge, there are no other injured,’ Brekke, the police chief, said. Norway police chief says there is no indication of terrorist attack.
A man reportedly armed with a knife attacked passers-by on the streets of the Norwegian capital, Oslo, on Tuesday, before being shot dead by police, officials said (pictured, police at the scene)+5
Police officers cover the police car that was involved in the attack in Norway’s capital, Oslo, on Tuesday
The attacker was convicted over a similar semi-naked June 4, 2019 rampage where they stabbed a passer-by several times in the upper body. He had reportedly set fire to his clothes before charging five people with a knife.
The victim resisted and was aided by passersby who distracted the knifeman, helping the man survive the brutal attack.
The attacker, who reportedly shouted ‘allahu akbar’ during the 2019 assault, was shot by police with a stun gun as he was arrested.
At trial, court-appointed mental health experts disagreed over whether he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia or drug-induced psychosis, but both the prosecution and the defence agreed he should be sectioned to compulsory mental healthcare.
