Shooting in Uppsala – man dead: “Always be happy”

The residents woke up to a bang.

In the stairwell lay a young man with fatal injuries.

It was the third shooting that shook Uppsala in less than a week.

– I used to meet him here in the area and he was always so happy and helpful. It is so terrible that the wrong people are murdered, says Alva.

The police cordons flutter outside the 1950s house in Sala hill in Uppsala. The residents have not been allowed to leave their apartments since the police arrived on the scene early Tuesday morning.

– It’s terrible, it’s a shock for all of us, says a person who lives next door.

It was at 05.16 that the police were alerted that an injured person had been found in a stairwell here.

It turned out to be a young man in his 20s who had been shot. Before he reached the hospital, he was dead.

A resident was awakened a short time before the shooting by knocking on a door somewhere in the house.

Then followed a bang.

– But I don’t know what guns sound like, so I thought someone had dropped a piece of furniture on the stairs.

The person looked out through the peephole but saw only fog outside.

A few minutes later blue light flashed in through the windows.

– I looked out again and saw how they performed CPR on someone, says the resident.

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Unintended victim

The man who was shot is believed to be an accidental victim, according to information to Aftonbladet. In the same stairwell lives a relative of the so-called “Kurdish fox”, Rawa Majid. But the shooter is suspected of knocking on the wrong door and killing the wrong person.

Alva lives a stone’s throw away and she often used to meet the murdered young man in the area.

The news has just reached her that he is dead and she is devastated.

– He was a security for me here in the neighborhood, someone who was always happy, active and said hello and who used to help me carry grocery bags from the store. I didn’t know him, but this is still felt. It came as a shock. It is so terrible that the wrong people are murdered, says Alva.

Several other residents in the area describe it as usually calm and safe – but that the violence has crept ever closer.

– What has happened is very unpleasant, but somehow people have been waiting for it to happen. Just last week there was a shooting very close to me. And then another shooting. This is a very nice old area that has never been affected by this type of crime before. Unfortunately, I don’t dare believe that it will go in the right direction again, says a resident in the area.

This was the third shooting in less than a week in Uppsala. All are linked, according to information to Aftonbladet, to an internal conflict within the criminal network Foxtrot – a conflict in which the orderers of the murders seem to have deliberately aimed to harm each other’s relatives.

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Woman shot to death six days ago

Outside a villa in the Gränby area, just 2.3 kilometers away from today’s roadblocks, there are flowers on a mailbox. The police cordon is still in place.

A woman in her 60s was shot to death here just six days ago.

She was the mother of the 33-year-old man who is believed to be on the other side of the internal conflict in Foxtrot.

Four days later another shooting followed – this time in the Stenhagen district.

The motive is believed to be retaliation for the shooting death of the 33-year-old’s mother – this time the intended victim was Rawa Majid’s mother-in-law. But when no one answered when the shooter knocked on the door, he instead fired a shot that hit the wrong house.

No one was injured, but the mother-in-law tells Aftonbladet that the incident left a deep mark on her. No one knows what would have happened if someone had opened the door at her home.

– I am a very tough, cocky and forward woman with civil courage. You know, I’m a person who never cries, but now I’m so damn scared.

A friend of the murdered 58-year-old woman says she is in shock after being told another person has fallen victim to the ongoing conflict.

– My friend was the world’s kindest person and mother. She helped everyone who was having a hard time, collected money for Syria and other countries that needed help. And now another innocent being murdered. It’s just violence, violence, violence now. They need to stop shooting each other!