UPPSALA, Sweden — Three people were killed in a shooting at a hair salon near Vaksala Square in central Uppsala on April 29, 2025, as police launched a murder investigation and searched for a gunman who fled on a scooter.
The attack struck a busy part of the city, only days before the Walpurgis spring festival, when crowds normally fill the streets. Police said they had cordoned off a wide area after the shooting, while Swedish media reported that the gunman escaped on a scooter and had not been caught by the time of the latest update. The police response included a helicopter search, door-to-door witness checks and temporary disruption to local train services so the suspect could not use the network to get away.
Witnesses described the shooting as abrupt and terrifying. One said everything happened so fast, while another told Swedish television he heard two bangs that sounded like fireworks before seeing police and ambulances flood the area. Those accounts fit the picture of a fast-moving public attack in a city that is now used to seeing rapid armed responses, but not enough to make the event less shocking to residents.
The circumstances around the victims remained sensitive. Swedish broadcaster SVT reported that one of the dead was being investigated over an alleged planned attack against a relative of a gang leader. That detail did not amount to a motive for the shooting, and the evidence packet does not say whether it is connected to the gunman’s escape. Even so, it is part of the public record around the case and shows how gang-linked violence continues to distort Swedish public life.
Police tried to reassure the public while the search continued. In an update on its website, the force said there was no danger to the public and described the incident as isolated, even as concern grew ahead of the upcoming Walpurgis celebrations. Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer called it a brutal act of violence. The combination of a public manhunt, a locked-down city centre and a festival on the calendar gave the incident a broader symbolic weight than a single local shooting would normally carry.
The case also sits inside a wider national debate over gun crime. Sweden has seen a sharp rise in shootings and gang attacks in recent years, prompting government pressure for tighter gun laws and more aggressive policing. The Uppsala attack did not immediately prove that it was part of that pattern, but the setting, the target and the police response all made it hard to avoid that context.
For now, the most important facts are simple: three people are dead, the suspect is still at large and a normally busy central district has been turned into a crime scene. The police search may eventually clarify who was targeted and why, but the city is already left with a familiar modern Swedish problem — a violent attack in public, a fast and uncertain manhunt and a community trying to carry on with a major festival approaching.
