Kronospan: Swiss Workplace Shooting [Updated]

Update: A fourth person has died. Victor Berisha, 42, an ethnic Albanian from Kosovo, has been identified as the Kronospan shooter. He had been with Kronospan for ten years. The weapon used in the attack has been identified as a Sphinx AT 380 handgun, a compact pistol produced by a Swiss company.

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Central Switzerland is the latest location of a mass shooting in a canteen. Reports of several people being killed at their Swiss Kronospan workplace on Wednesday, February 27, 2013, are crossing the wires.

Cronus [Kronos] Devouring His Children by Francisco de Goya (1746-1828). 

Image: Western Michigan University.

Greek Pan.

Police in Lucerne canton (state) said in a statement that the shooting occurred shortly after 9 a.m. on the 27th instant at the premises of Kronospan, a wood-processing company in the small town of Menznau, west of Lucerne. They said there were “several dead and several seriously injured people” and that rescue services were deployed and the scene sealed off. They did not elaborate.

The local Neue Luzerner Zeitung newspaper cited a witness as saying that the shooter opened fire in the company canteen. Swiss news website 20min.ch, citing a reporter at the site, said police confirmed three deaths — including the assailant — and said seven people were injured, some of them seriously. Some say five have been killed.

However, police in Lucerne, the local administrative center, said they didn’t yet have figures. No identity or motive for the shooter was given.

Kronospan workers at the Menznau location.

According to the local town council, Kronospan has some 450 employees.Menznau is a municipality in the district of Willisau in the canton of Lucerne in Switzerland. Menznau is first mentioned in 1185 as Menzenowa.

Kronos is a Titan, the father of Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Hestia, Demeter, and Hera.

Pan is the god of the wild, shepherds and flocks, nature of mountain wilds, hunting and rustic music, and companion of the nymphs. Pan also is linked to panic, behavior contagion, and the copycat effect.

Kronospan is the world’s largest manufacturer of wood panel products and laminate flooring. Kronospan began in 1897 when their first sawmill was founded in Austria. Their Oxford, Alabama plant is the company’s first in the United States, and sits on a 460 acre site in Calhoun County, Alabama.

February 27th is the 80th anniversary of 1933's Reichstag fire, in which Germany's parliament building in Berlin, the Reichstag, was set on fire (which was blamed on Communists by the Nazis, but probably set by Nazis).

In 2001, Friedrich Leibacher walked into the canton’s parliament in Zug armed with an assault rifle, shotgun, pistol, and homemade police vest. He killed 14 people before commiting suicide in an incident that was dubbed the “Zug massacre.”

See also, Cafeteria Carnage.

Thanks to InvInk for heads up.