Sello mall shooting

The Sello mall shooting occurred on the morning of 31 December 2009 shortly after 10:08 local time at the Prisma hypermarket in Sello mall, located in the Leppävaara district of Espoo, Finland. Ibrahim Shkupolli, who was born in Yugoslavia but had lived in Finland for many years, shot three men and one woman who all worked at Prisma. Before the shooting, he had killed his ex-girlfriend at her home. After the shooting, Shkupolli left the mall and killed himself in his own apartment.

Ibrahim Shkupolli (1966 – 31 December 2009) was born in Mitrovica, Kosovo, worked as a grocer, and had resided illegally in Finland since 1990. He entered Finland through Norway in 1990. Shkupolli worked in a warehousing company that delivered to the Prisma supermarket chain.

The Sello mall, which opened in 2003, is the largest in the Nordic region with over 170 stores. On the day of the shooting the mall contained between two and three thousand customers. Witnesses described the gunman as calm when walking out of the grocery store in the mall immediately after the shooting.

Shkupolli had been married to a Kosovar Albanian woman with whom he had three children but maintained an on-off relationship with his Finnish girlfriend both before and after the marriage. In both of his former and present municipalities of residence, Mikkeli and Espoo, restraining orders had been imposed on him after his girlfriend filed charges about his behavior and numerous threats, including one to kill her. The order imposed by the court barred him from approaching both her and her job location. It is thought that he believed she had begun a relationship with one of the supermarket staff, and that this was the motive for his crimes. He had been convicted of assault in 2001 and possession of a 7.65 mm hand gun and associated rounds of ammunition in 2003 and 9 x 18 mm cartridges in 2007 as well as possession of narcotics. He was also under investigation for being involved in a human trafficking ring that organises illegal immigration from the Balkans to Finland.

The firearm used was a Czechoslovak-made 9mm CZ 75 pistol, manufactured in 1984 and was originally sold in Norway where the gun went missing due to an unsolved burglary case in 1990. The questions of how and when Shkupolli acquired it remain unknown. The first victim, the woman found in the apartment, was killed with a Smith & Wesson-branded hunting knife. The body had a long and deep incised wound reaching the cervical spine. The apartment had no signs of struggle.