May 8 (UPI) — A female employee at Warsaw University in Poland was killed and a second worker was seriously injured by an axe-wielding intruder. Police said they had detained a 22-year-old man who is Polish.
The attack on the campus of the university in the capital occurred at around 6:40 p.m. local time Wednesday evening, the Warsaw Police Department said in a post on X.
“A man entered the University of Warsaw Campus and attacked the people there with an axe. He is a 22-year-old Polish citizen. One person died, the other was taken to hospital with serious injuries.
“Prosecutors and police are working at the scene,” said police.
A local prosecutor told the BBC that the suspect was a law student in his third year at the university who was not from Warsaw.
The university said in a statement that the victim, a member of staff, was attacked in the main campus building and that a university security guard was seriously injured when he attempted to intervene.
Saying the University of Warsaw community had been “struck by a terrible tragedy,” university officials delcared a day of mourning Thursday, canceled all classes and ordered security be stepped up.
“Our colleague, a UW employee, was brutally murdered. The perpetrator has been caught,” Alojzy Nowak, the university’s rector, said in a statement.
“We express our great sorrow and sympathy to the family and loved ones. A member of university security was also seriously injured,” he said.
Local reports said the woman was a 53-year-old porter at the university who died at the scene and the man who was injured was aged 39.
Justice Minister Adam Bodnar, who was attending an event in an adjacent lecture theater, said one of his officers rushed to the aid of the two victims and engaged with the attacker.
Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski said it was a “macabre attack” that had left him shocked.
“This brutal attack must be met with severe punishment,” he wrote on social media.
The university also canceled its annual two-day Juwenalia music festival which had been due to get underway Friday.
The university, Poland’s largest higher-education institution, employs more than 8,000 staff and has 36,300 students, more than 3,600 of them international students and doctoral candidates, according to its website.
