Sanna Sillanpää


Sanna Riitta Liisa Sillanpää is a Finnish woman who shot three men to death with a rented 9mm Beretta 92FS semi-automatic pistol on 21 February 1999 in a shooting club on Albertinkatu, Helsinki, and wounded another man, who received lifetime injuries. One man present was not harmed. One of the dead was the shooting club's 23-year-old supervisor.
As Sillanpää was leaving the club, she said: "This is what they taught us at the FBI academy, isn't it?". She then travelled from the Helsinki centre to the Helsinki-Vantaa Airport in a city bus, carrying a gun and ammunition. At the airport she was trying to buy a ticket to "somewhere". Sillanpää was caught after four hours as she was boarding an aeroplane to London. Before boarding the plane she left the murder weapon in a trash can in the airport terminal. It was discovered by a cleaner.
At the trials and hearings Sillanpää did not speak at all. No motive for the act was found.
In mental health examinations Sillanpää was found to suffer from paranoid schizophrenia. In district court, the state prosecutor Maarit Loimukoski demanded Sillanpää to be imprisoned for three acts of manslaughter without full understanding and for two attempted acts of manslaughter, but on 11 October 1999, the district court found Sillanpää to be without understanding.
Loimukoski appealed the decision to the Helsinki Court of Appeal, but the decision was upheld on 11 October 2000. Loimukoski explained that the reason for her demand for punishment was that Sillanpää had acted with premeditation in attempting to flee Finland and hiding the gun after the act. Sillanpää was sent to the Niuvanniemi mental hospital in Kuopio.
Sillanpää, 30 years old at the time, has a Master's degree in computer science and is an IT expert who worked for Fujitsu Finland Oy in Helsinki.
After the incident, many wanted to tighten the availability of weapons at shooting ranges.

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