Four people have been killed and six injured in a shooting incident at the Kronospan timber processing works in the village of Menznau in canton Lucerne, police have confirmed.
The gunman, a 42-year-old Swiss who had been with the company for more than ten years, is among the dead. He reportedly used a pistol and shot himself.
The suspect used a Sphinx AT 380, which is not an army gun, Lucerne police said on Thursday. The police said it is still trying to work out how the suspect came into the possession of the pistol and whether he legally owned the weapon.
The shooting occurred shortly after 9am, according to the police. The gunman had apparently picked out the victims, all of whom were Swiss.
A spokesman for the investigating authorities said on Wednesday the shooting took place over two to three minutes, with the dead and injured found on the factory floor, in a corridor and the site canteen. The investigations are led by the Sursee prosecutor’s office.
The Kronospan works employs about 450 people. Menznau is located about 25 kilometres west of Lucerne.
Kronospan chief executive Mauro Capozzo said the suspected assailant, who was still with the company at the time of the shooting, was „a quiet man, no other incidents involving him are known“. He added that the company hadn’t laid anyone off recently.
Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga said the incident showed how much suffering can be caused with weapons, but also that the legislation has to be continuously improved. There are still hundreds of thousands of unregistered weapons in Switzerland, Sommaruga said.
Gun crimes
Gun ownership is widespread in Switzerland, the result of liberal regulation – a 2011 referendum to tighten controls failed – and a long-standing tradition for men to keep their military rifles at home after completing compulsory military service.
An estimated 2.3 million firearms are owned by the country’s eight million people.
There have been several high-profile incidents over the years, including the killing of 14 people at a parliamentary session in canton Zug, not far from Lucerne, in 2001.
Last month, a 33-year-old man killed three women and wounded two men in a southern Swiss village.
If reports of gun violence are relatively few and far between in the Swiss media, it is because most cases are suicides, a subject the press traditionally avoids.
Between 1996 and 2005, 3,410 suicides (24-28 per cent of all those in Switzerland) were committed using firearms. That percentage trails only the United States, where 57 per cent of suicides involve a gun. Few European countries come anywhere near Switzerland.