At approximately 11.00 am on 4 February this year, Rickard Andersson turned up at Campus Risbergska, an institution of adult education he had attended between 2013 and 2021, in the Swedish city of Örebro. He was carrying some IKEA bags and a guitar case containing a pump-action shotgun, two semi-automatic rifles, ammunition, and a number of smoke bombs. He changed into military fatigues in one of the school’s bathrooms before walking through the hallways opening fire. The police received reports of gunfire at around 12:30, and they arrived on the scene within minutes to find the shooting still in progress. By the time it was all over, Andersson had murdered ten people and wounded six others before apparently shooting himself dead. It was the deadliest mass shooting in Swedish history.

Andersson was a lonely 35-year-old living on his own. His schoolmates remember him as a normal, happy child until about the age of twelve. Then something happened to him. He became withdrawn, solitary, and hardly spoke a word. He finished school without passing a single subject. He tried various jobs but was unable to hold any of them down for more than a couple of weeks. He was born Jonas Simon, but in 2017, he changed his name to Rickard Andersson, adopting one of Sweden’s most common surnames—a bit like someone in England renaming himself John Smith. In other words, he seems to have tried to make himself as anonymous as possible.

Andersson applied for social help, which the council granted so long as he looked for a job, which he wouldn’t do. The council stopped paying his assistance in 2014. After that, according to tax records, he earned nothing, relying instead upon help from his relatives. He seems to have worried about money a lot. In an effort to complete his education, he took classes in mathematics at Risbergska but never passed the exam. There is little trace of him on social media, but he posted two videos in which he read from council documents regarding his financial situation.