Visualizing Violence: Reconstructing a School Shooting Using Audio, Ballistics, and Simplified 3D Models

In the winter of 2025, Sweden experienced its most devastating school shooting, resulting in ten fatalities and multiple injuries. The perpetrator moved through a 17,000 square-meter (183,000 sq. ft.) school building, firing over 100 rounds from multiple weapons before being stopped by police. With no surveillance cameras and over 600 rooms, the investigation faced significant challenges in reconstructing the sequence of events.

This presentation outlines the forensic reconstruction of the shooting incident, focusing on how ballistic evidence and audio analysis from emergency calls, mobile footage, and police body cameras were used to establish a timeline. By correlating gunshot sounds with known shooting locations, we were able to determine the order of events and the perpetrator’s path through the school.

A key part of the reconstruction involved scanning the entire building using terrestrial laser scanning (TLS). The sheer size of the structure presented technical challenges, particularly in processing and managing the resulting point cloud data. The presentation will address how these hardware and data limitations were handled to ensure a usable and accurate 3D model.