Shooting Victim Made a Final Call to His Fiancée

Police are investigating whether Sweden's worst-ever mass shooting at an adult education center with a diverse student body was prompted by racism. "We are looking at all of those parts," says Anna Bergqvist, who's heading the police investigation in Örebro, per the Guardian. A gunman opened fire at the school, where 30% of students are enrolled in Swedish For Immigrants courses, around 12:30pm Tuesday, killing 10 people and himself. Though police said they're awaiting DNA confirmation before identifying the shooter, media outlets named him as Rickard Andersson, a 35-year-old former student long unemployed. He had permits for four rifles, three of which were found with his body, per Reuters.

Örebro Police Chief Lars Wirén said responding officers arrived within five minutes of the first alarm and were met with "an inferno with dead people, injured people, screams and smoke." One student who immigrated from Syria as a child reported that when she heard screams about a shooter, she thought it was a prank. Sweden had never had a school shooting before, per the BBC. "Then I heard the gunshots," 36-year-old Nour Afram tells the outlet. "I was so scared I felt like my heart stopped in my chest." As of early Friday, police were still working to identify those killed, though the Syrian and Bosnian embassies confirmed citizens of those countries were among the dead.

Salim Iskef, a refugee from Aleppo whose father was killed during the war, placed a video call to his fiancée to tell her he'd been shot. "He said he loves me and that's the last thing I heard," Kareen Elia told SVT. She "broke down in screams and tears and had to be carried out of the church" during a memorial service on Thursday, per the BBC. Bergqvist said the victims were of "multiple nationalities, different genders and different ages," per the Guardian. Now, people "are frightened to go to school," a student tells the BBC. "We feel like Sweden has become like America." Sweden's right-wing government said Friday it would move to ban some semi-automatic weapons and tighten the vetting process for gun licenses in response, per Reuters. (More Sweden stories.)