A South Sudanese man arrested on suspicion of stabbing three people to death after hijacking a bus in Norway had been due to be deported today, police have revealed.
The bus driver, who was in his 50s, and his two passengers, a 19-year-old woman and a Swedish man in his 50s, were killed in the attacks.
The 30-year-old suspect was an asylum seeker from South Sudan who had been living at Ardal reception centre, near the scene of the stabbings.
And police officer Aage Loeseth said the man had been scheduled to fly alone and without security to capital city Oslo on Tuesday before being transported out of the country.
He said his asylum application had been refused because he had made an earlier application in Spain, where he was to be sent.
The deputy director of the organisation managing the reception centre in Ardal, Tor Brekke, said the attack had been “completely unexpected”.
“There was nothing to indicate any imbalance, or that he could do this,” he said.
The nearest police patrol when the alarm was raised after the attacks at around 5.30pm on Monday was 55 miles away.
The first emergency workers to arrive at the scene were firefighters followed by ambulance staff, with the hijacking initially reported as a traffic accident.
Norwegian newspaper VG said an ambulance worker approached the man while firefighters armed with hammers helped overpower him by spraying him with powder extinguishers.
Police arrived around 1 hour and 20 minutes after the alarm was raised and took the man into custody. He is now being held under armed guard at Haukeland hospital in Bergen, having reportedly suffered only minor cuts.
Olaug Holme, from Hordaland Police, told Dagbladet: “We have police on site who are guarding him.
“There will be a medical assessment as to when he may be transported elsewhere, (but) I cannot say much about the medical situation now.”
Emergency terror police were initially scrambled to the location of the stabbings from Oslo, but turned back when it became clear the suspect had been arrested.
Forensics officers remained at the scene overnight, while a centre was set up nearby for relatives of those affected.
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