A Foreign Crime: The 2015 Trollhättan school attack

There are countless reasons, many motives for why people commit crimes. Greed, passion or just by taking advantage of an opportunity when “it presented itself,” to name a few. That said, one of the most abhorrent types of crimes one can commit are those born from hate. Targeting a person over their gender, their sexual orientation, class, social standing, religion, age or race, hate crimes are no excuse yet they happen time and time again.

Of the many infamous examples over the years, the one I’m mentioning here occurred one fateful morning at a school in 2015; in the Swedish city of Trollhättan, where a man walked into the school located in an area with a high population of immigrants; donning a mask and wielding a sword with sinister intentions. Initially mistaken for playing a plausibly harmless if not unnerving Halloween prank the man, however, showed his true, ugly colors.

Background

The Swedish City in question, Trollhättan, has had a long history when it comes to hate crimes committed on its land, beginning in the 1990s when a mosque was set ablaze in the act of arson.

Although surveys which were done by non-governmental organizations have frequently shown Sweden as the most tolerant European country towards immigration, its population is profoundly divided on the matter. According to some research, consistently over the last 20 years, many Swedes expressed opinions of wanting to limit the number of refugees coming into the country…