GENEVA, Switzerland — Law enforcement officials have confirmed the arrest of a suspect connected to a deadly weekend mass shooting at an open-air rave event in northern Switzerland, a violence incident that has shaken the normally low-crime Alpine nation. Authorities announced Monday that the 43-year-old suspect, a Swiss national, was taken into custody just before 1 a.m. local time, though officials have declined to share the exact location of the arrest for ongoing investigative reasons.
The shooting unfolded in the early hours of Sunday on the grounds of a horse racing track located on the outskirts of Aarau, the capital of Switzerland’s Aargau canton. The event was already winding down when the gunfire broke out, according to local police accounts. A 22-year-old woman was pronounced dead at the scene from her gunshot wounds. Five additional victims — four men and a second woman ranging in age from 24 to 27 years old — were transported to area hospitals with injuries that span from minor life-threatening to critical.
While Swiss police initially confirmed all victims are legal residents of Switzerland, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni later clarified that the deceased woman and two of the five wounded victims hold Italian citizenship. Investigators are currently working to map out a potential motive for the attack, and preliminary assessments indicate the shooting was carried out by a single lone perpetrator, with no evidence of co-conspirators identified at this stage.
Aargau canton police have announced they will hold a formal public press conference on Wednesday to release updated details on the case, and have paused all additional information disclosures until that briefing. The shooting has drawn particular attention across Switzerland because mass public shootings are extremely uncommon in the country, even though Switzerland has one of the highest rates of civilian gun ownership in Europe, with widespread access to firearms for recreational hunting and sport shooting.