BBCIn the middle of a major high -ceiling church in Orbro, Jacob Casylia, a Syrian Orthodox priest, looked towards the colored glass windows on top of it, then retreated in his hands. He modified the golden cross hanging from his neck.
“The police say that this man acted alone,” the priest said. “But this hatred, it comes from somewhere.”
He was a member of the 29 -year -old Casselia, Salim ISKEF, among those who were killed in Orbro on Tuesday at the first shooting at the Sweden School and the worst group shooting in the country's history. The gunman killed 10 students in a center for learning adults and then himself.
Among the dead Syrians and Bosnians, according to residents and embassies in those countries, but the police in Orbro did not provide any details of the victims publicly.
Casselia is described as nice and thoughtful, keen to help other members of society. The priest said – he came to Sweden with his mother and sister – refugees from Aleppo, where his father was killed in the war. ISKEF was studying the Swedish at Risbergska School, the goal of Tuesday's attack.
The priest said: “He was just a good man.” “Not looking for trouble. He just showed great success. He was a member of our society.”
The night after the attack, Casselia sat with the ISKEF family for their comfort.
ISKEF was engaged and is scheduled to marry this summer. The priest said that his fiancé Crane Elijah, 24, was “severely affected”, and was “going through a very difficult and very dark experience.”
In a souvenir in Orbro Thursday evening, Elijah collapsed in screaming and tears and had to leave the church.
On the days after the shooting, there was a lack of information from the authorities. On Thursday night, the police did not confirm the identity of the gunman – which was widely reported by the Swedish media as Ricard Anderson, who is 35 years old – nor any details about his motive or victims.
In a statement issued early on Tuesday, less than 24 hours after the attack, the police said the shooter does not seem to be motivated by any ideology. On Thursday, Anna Bergkvist, who led the police investigation, seemed to be in the statement.
“Why did they say that, I cannot comment,” she told the BBC. “We look at different motives and we will announce it when we have.”
The Swedish police are usually cautious about naming the suspects during the investigation, but the lack of official information has contributed to the feeling of fear and uncertainty among migrant societies in Orbro during the past few days.
“We are getting all our information from the media and I don't know why,” said Nour Afram, 36, who was inside the Rispergska School when the attack began.
“We need more information,” she said. “We don't know why he did so, why did you target this school? Was it sick or was it something else?”
Afram was waiting for the chapter to go when I heard that people screaming at the shooter – something incredible for her I thought at first was a joke.
“We started running and then heard gunshots,” she said. “One at the beginning, then Tak Tak Tak – maybe ten shots. I was very afraid of felt my heart stopped in my chest.”
Avram, who immigrated from Syria to Orbro as a child, said she was afraid for the first time to send her three children to school in Sweden.
Zaki Aydin, a 50 -year -old Syriac teacher in Orbro, said he was first afraid of his young students, who are mostly from the Middle East. “We are foreigners, we have to be careful now,” he said.
Idin used to be the doors of the semester and the church building open when he learned. “Now we are closing them,” he said. “And yesterday I asked someone to stand outside to prevent anyone we did not already know from coming.”
One of the 18 -year -old students at school, Gabriel, said that “a nightmare has become a reality” for Orbro.
“The problem is that we have no motive, just speculation,” he said. “Many people are afraid of my life from going to school, we feel that Sweden has become like America. The things you see on TV have happened here.”
In the absence of any official news about the motivation, all the residents here in Orbro is that the murderer seems to be a isolated white Swedish man and that he targeted a school with a large migratory student base.
Thomas Politi Lindsrom, an academic researcher in racism at the University of Oppsala, who coincides with a few minutes away from the attack site and heard police helicopters flying over his home on Tuesday, said Uarbro is facing “very terrible time.”
“You can really feel it everywhere, it affects everyone,” said Lundstrom. “We do not know the motives of the shooter yet, but we live in a very racist time and this is a school for many immigrants.”
He said that the shootings such as those in Rispergska were “the result of how our society is looking at the present time, how our politicians speak, and how we talk about each other.” “This is what happens when politicians speak the way they speak at the present time.”
At the entrance to the absolute Risbergska School early Thursday morning, people stopped leaving flowers or light candles or simply to stand and enjoy the scene. From the street, you can see the front door clearly through which the murderer was photographed appears from classroom to class with a rifle.
Among those who came alone and stood up for a while by a group of candles and flowers, the city's mayor, John Johansson, who made an official visit to the site the previous day alongside the Prime Minister, the king and the queen, but stopped there again on his way to work on Thursday to pay His respect.
“I hope the police will find conclusions soon,” said Johansson. “The city needs answers, our society needs answers, and the families of the victims need to know the reason for this.”
He said it was not time to “speculate or rush forward.” “We do not want to contribute to any wrong rumors, so we hope that the police will find answers as soon as possible.”
Tony Esther, a salesman from Escletstona, about 80 km from Orbro, also stopped at school Thursday morning. “This type of shooting, in a school, I read it elsewhere but not in Sweden,” he said.
He added: “It seems that this man is Swedish, and this may be better than if he was a responsible immigrant.” “Of course it is a terrible event in both cases, but we do not want to add more fuel to the fire.”
The police provided some limited information about the investigation. They said about 130 officers responded to the shooting in total, and that they met them “hell” at school. They said they believed that the gunman acted alone.
He told family members, former school friends, and Swedish media neighbors that he had become volatile in recent years and may have suffered from psychological issues.
There were complaints about dealing with the case. Bosnian Ambassador Boujan Susic, who visited the shooting site, learned from the residents that the Bosnian was among the dead.
“I find it strange to say less, the police choose to block information related to foreign citizens from the relevant embassies,” he said.
Others, including members of the Syrian society, said that they trust that the police were doing the right thing and only hoping to know more soon. Casselly, the Syrian Orthodox priest, said that the broader society “does not know what the police think, but we trust that they have their own plan.”
Hundreds of people came to the Church of Castilia Thursday night from Syrian, Turkish, Iraqi societies and other immigrant societies. Salem's image, one of the victims of the shooting, sat on a holder. Children from the group sings hymns. The ISKEF family, who was sitting in Pio, was consumed by sadness.
It is difficult to understand why these types of attacks occur even when the motivation is known. Without it, it is more confused. A few hours before the start of the memorial service, Casselia was sitting in Pio in his empty church, trying to understand it.
“People die, of course. They have become sick, they have some accidents,” he said. “But this, how can we understand this? We are shot in school. We were not able to dream about this. We cannot even describe it. Why?”
Casselia said that there was some comfort in listening from the police that the gunman acted alone. She left less concerned about another attack.
The priest said: “But this man had something in his heart, a kind of hatred, gathering from somewhere.” “We cannot say that there are no others.”
Additional reports by Villan Chatge. Pictures of Joel Gunter.
