The suspected gunman who opened fire in central Krakow on Saturday has died in hospital, Polish police said on Monday, two days after officers shot and critically wounded him within minutes of the attack. The 24-year-old Polish national had undergone multiple surgeries before his death was announced. Six people were killed and 15 wounded when he drove into the city’s Main Market Square and fired on the crowd, an assault prosecutors are investigating as a terrorist offense.
- Key Point: Police confirmed the suspect died early on Monday morning, ending a two-day hospital vigil after officers shot him at the scene.
- Key Point: Six people died — four women and two men — including a British national and an Austrian woman; the wounded came from Britain, Portugal, Russia, Germany and Austria.
- Key Point: The bodies of the suspect’s father, mother and sister were found at the family home in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski, about 150 kilometers (93 miles) from Krakow.
- Key Point: Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński said the attacker held radical, ultranationalist views and was apparently inspired by far-right ideology.
A death announced, a case still open
Regional police announced the death in a brief statement on social media, saying the man behind “the tragic events” had died in hospital that morning. He had been in critical condition since Saturday afternoon, when armed officers confronted him in the square and a gunfight broke out. Officials said the suspect kept firing even after he was hit, and that police stopped him within roughly three minutes of the first shots — a speed that senior figures credited with preventing a far larger toll.
The death does not close the investigation. Poland’s National Prosecutor’s Office said it had opened a probe into the killing of six people with a firearm and the attempted murder of many others, including police officers, describing the act as a terrorist offense. A spokesperson for the office said it was “highly likely” that the killings at the family home and those in Krakow were carried out by the same person, while stressing that inquiries were continuing. Prosecutors had been preparing six murder charges, with the count expected to rise to nine if the suspect were confirmed as responsible for the three deaths at the house.
Police have not named the suspect publicly. Polish media have identified him as Michał O. and reported that he held a valid firearms permit with no prior criminal record. According to Deputy Inspector Katarzyna Cisło, a police spokesperson, he wore military-style clothing and used “military weapons”; four firearms were recovered from him or from his car. A further seven were seized at the family home, bringing the total to 11, and the regional governor said the suspect’s father had legally owned more than 10 guns. The suspect was a member of a shooting club and appeared to be a highly skilled marksman, a club spokesperson said.
Victims, rescuers and a square under lockdown
The dead were of several nationalities. Four were Polish — three women and one man, according to the Małopolska regional governor — alongside a British man and an Austrian woman. Sixteen people were taken to hospital, among them five foreign nationals, two police officers and the attacker himself. The interior ministry later said the foreign wounded came from Austria, Britain, Germany, Portugal and Russia. Both injured officers underwent surgery; one emerged from a coma on Sunday, and both were reported to be conscious.
Two off-duty surgeons who had been eating lunch near the square ran toward the gunfire to give first aid before ambulances could reach the scene. One of them, Professor Michał Pędziwiatr, described the decision as instinctive, saying there were no professionals nearby at that moment. His colleague, identified in local media as Dr Mateusz Wierdak, pressed on the bleeding wound of the most seriously hurt officer with his bare hands and packed gauze into the chest cavity, buying time until paramedics arrived.
“We saw the shooting attack. And what a surgeon can do in a situation like this?… We decided to help the victims as soon as possible,” Pędziwiatr said.
Witnesses described confusion and panic. A visitor from London said she shouted at her friends to run and they sprinted until they found a hotel to shelter in. A man from West Yorkshire recalled hearing multiple gunshots from inside a fast-food restaurant near the square, then walking out to see paramedics working on a casualty and a body covered with foil blankets about 20 meters away. Another woman, visiting from Warsaw, said she threw herself over an elderly stranger as the gunman passed about a meter behind her back, and later found shrapnel wounds in six places.
The square and surrounding streets stayed closed through Sunday, with only essential workers allowed through and flags at the city hall flown at half-mast. The area reopened on Sunday evening, and mourners gathered to lay candles and flowers. St. Anne’s Church filled for a service for the victims. The hourly trumpet call from St. Mary’s Basilica — a five-note melody familiar to visitors from around the world — fell silent for 12 hours in tribute, the first interruption of its kind since 1939.
Far-right ideology at the center of the inquiry
Kierwiński said the attacker was influenced by far-right and ultranationalist thinking and held “very radical views.” An interior ministry spokesperson said emblems on his clothing were being examined, describing patches that carried various motifs now under specialist analysis. No information has been made public about whether he belonged to any organized extremist group.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk traveled to Krakow and framed the attack in stark terms.
“Until now in Poland we haven’t had such drastic cases of terrorism…that’s what we have to call this cruel attack on people’s lives here in Krakow,” Tusk said.
Poland entered two days of national mourning. The killings have unsettled a country where such violence is rare and gun ownership is tightly regulated: roughly 411,000 people out of a population of more than 37 million hold permits, though interest in firearms has been rising.
The sister killed at the family home was a 21-year-old third-year student at the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts, the academy confirmed in a statement, saying its community had been “painfully wounded.” Tributes described her as a gifted painter, photographer, poet and writer.
With the suspect dead, the criminal case against him will wind down without a trial, shifting the focus to what investigators can establish about motive, weapons and any network behind him. Prosecutors must now document how a licensed gun owner with no criminal record came to amass an arsenal and carry out the deadliest shooting modern Poland has seen. The answers will shape a wider debate over permit rules, far-right extremism and how the state monitors both.