At least three people were killed in a shooting outside a restaurant in the Austrian city of Linz, officials said Thursday. In the aftermath, the shocking event triggered a widespread police response, and the city will be left reeling as police work to uncover the circumstances leading to the deadly assault.
The shooting, the Austrian police said, occurred outside a restaurant in Linz, one of Austria’s largest cities in the northern part of the country. A group of police officers, emergency services, investigators and forensic experts showed up to the scene shortly after the gunfire broke out.
At least three people apparently died in the killing, according to official reports. The killings were tied to a weapon that police officials said was seized, but they did not give out details about who the victims or the shooter were. The local Austrian news company Kronen Zeitung believed the shooting would probably have been a murder-suicide.
A person is said to have shot two women and then himself. Police have not definitively established the exact details, but all three of them may have died at the scene. Other accounts suggesting the victims’ links suggested speculation had advanced about a possible family relation or an inheritance argument.
But authorities have not published their official motive, and are continuing to analyse evidence from the crime scene. Crime was said to have taken place in the afternoon near a popular Linz inn or restaurant, and panic was triggered for residents and local clients in the vicinity.
The dozens of emergency vehicles, police officers and police rushed in after the shooting, they said. Forensic teams were on the scene as others worked to establish a security perimeter around the event. And the public was quickly informed by the police that there was no ongoing danger or other greater threat represented by the incident.
Officials said the situation was controlled and invited residents to keep quiet and refrain from spreading rumours during the investigation. Austria is known for being a safer nation than a comparatively large number of the rest of Europe and has relatively few deadly shooting incidents of this category.
That Linz incident has stirred the nation, which brings that dialogue back into the sun on gun violence in Austria and its home turf. The authorities are expected to release additional details once they complete preliminary investigation work and notify the families of the victims. We still don’t know what was really going on when the lethal shooting took place, and Linz is still reeling.
