Bio

Noah Esbensen was born in 2000. He is Danish.

He lived in the same home as his father. His father was a member of a sport shooting club and legally owned firearms. A gun safe can be seen in videos Esbensen posted.

Esbensen had a history of contact with the psychiatric healthcare system. When he first entered care, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and psychosis and was given antipsychotic medication. Later, psychiatric officials treated him for autism. He also told his psychiatrists that he had an interest in serial killers and mass shooters, and he mentioned Randy Stair.

Murder Story

On 3 July 2022, Noah Esbensen returned to the Field's shopping mall in Copenhagen carrying a shoulder bag and cases with weapons. He went into the movie theater's restroom and sat in a toilet stall. There he loaded weapons, changed clothes, used his phone, and made a call to a psychiatrist's office that reached an automated message. He then played music, put on earbuds, and left the restroom at 17:32:56, leaving one rifle magazine and a Walther P1 handgun on the stall floor.

Right after leaving the restroom, he aimed at a 47-year-old Russian man who was at the theater with his two sons and fired two shots. The man was hit and later died from his injuries. A 17-year-old male employee stepped into the theater lobby, and Esbensen fired a shot that wounded the teen and then fired a second, point-blank shot that killed him. Esbensen then shot at an Afghan man who was at a counter, hitting his right shoulder. Esbensen unloaded and replaced his rifle magazine, then ran out of the theater into the main mall.

As he ran, he chased a woman and fired repeatedly, but one gun failed to fire because of an empty casing. He cleared the casing, loaded a new bullet, and continued through the mall. He ran toward the escalators where people were fleeing. He fired at the top of the escalators, hitting a woman in the leg and later hitting her again in the shoulder, and injuring another woman in the lower back. The escalators stopped and several people fell to the bottom. Esbensen fired again and killed a 17-year-old girl while injuring another person with the same shot. He reloaded his rifle.

After reloading, Esbensen shouted that no one in the mall was real and that "it's not real." A 13-year-old boy at the bottom of the escalators told him he was real and begged him not to shoot. Esbensen screamed and ran up the escalators, then spared the people there and continued to the third floor food court. There he fired down a hall and hit a Swedish man in the stomach, who later left the mall. Esbensen fired more shots that hit a window and a restroom area but did not hit anyone else.

Esbensen ran down the escalators and left the mall through an emergency exit on the second floor. He fired a final shot outside that did not hit anyone. He walked through the parking lot, knelt by a road, and called his mother. While he was on the phone, police arrived. He refused commands and shouted for police to kill him. Officers pepper-sprayed him, got him to lie down, handcuffed him, and arrested him at 17:48.

Police received the first reports of the shooting at 17:37. Three people were killed: a 17-year-old Danish girl, a 17-year-old Danish boy, and a 47-year-old Russian man living in Denmark. Four people were seriously wounded by gunfire. Another 23 people had minor injuries, including three from stray gunfire and twenty injured during evacuation. The incident was treated as non-terror related by police, and the victims appeared to have been random.

Esbensen was charged with three murders and seven attempted murders. He was remanded to a closed psychiatric unit and later remanded in custody. His trial began on 12 June 2023. On 5 July 2023, he was found insane and sentenced to detention in a secure medical facility. A temporary crisis center was opened after the shooting, and a memorial was held at Field's on 5 July 2022 attended by thousands, including senior political figures.