LONDON — A 19-year-old Norwegian man was arrested on suspicion of murder after a knife attack in Central London that killed an American woman and wounded five people, the Metropolitan Police said Thursday.
The attack Wednesday night, on the eastern corner of Russell Square in Bloomsbury — a neighborhood known for its handsome garden squares that is home to the British Museum and several universities — immediately raised fears about terrorism. But after investigating through the night, police said there was no evidence that the attack was politically motivated.
“Whilst the investigation is not yet complete, all of the work that we have done so far increasingly points to this tragic incident as having been triggered by mental health issues,’’ Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, the top counterterrorism official at the Metropolitan Police, said in a statement. “At this time we believe this was a spontaneous attack and the victims were selected at random.’’
Police had said in a statement early Thursday that terrorism was “one line of inquiry being explored,’’ but they later backed away from that theory.
“So far we have found no evidence of radicalization or anything that would suggest the man in our custody was motivated by terrorism,’’ Rowley told reporters outside New Scotland Yard, the police headquarters.
Rowley said the attacker was a Norwegian citizen of Somali ancestry, but that his background did not appear to be “relevant to the motivation for his actions.’’
Police identified the dead woman, an American citizen, as 64-year-old Darlene Horton.
Florida State University said Horton was married to psychology professor Richard Wagner, who had been teaching summer classes in London.
The five wounded people, two women and three men, included citizens of Australia, Britain, Israel, and the United States, Rowley said. All were hospitalized, but three were treated and released.
In Norway, the National Criminal Investigation Service said in a statement that it was cooperating with British authorities. The man immigrated to Britain from Norway as a child in 2002, the agency said.
The first call about the attack came at 10:33 p.m., London police said.
Armed officers arrived six minutes later, and used a stun gun to disable the suspect. He was treated at a hospital and then taken into custody at a police station in South London. “This morning, we have searched an address in North London and will search another in South London,’’ Rowley told reporters.
Helen Edwards, 33, who lives in the area, was passing through Russell Square when she came across armed police officers, a rare sight in London.
“When I arrived, the police cordon was up, there were a lot of armed police, police cars, ambulance,’’ she said in a telephone interview, estimating that she had arrived about an hour after the attack.
