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Child's toy bow and arrow spark police alert

Sophie Inge
Sophie Inge - [email protected]
Child's toy bow and arrow spark police alert
A Stockholm police car. File photo: TT

After a summer of violence the southern Swedish town of Malmö is on edge, so much so that a full-scale police operation was launched for what turned out to be a child playing with a toy gun and a bow and arrow.

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In the early hours of Thursday morning Malmö police were alerted to a potentially armed man on the balcony of a residential building in the neighbourhood of Lindeborg. 

“The person who called us had seen a person on a balcony with some sort of gun and a bow and arrow,” a spokesperson for South Region Police told The Local.

After a summer of violence in the troubled city, including four grenade attacks last week, police weren’t going to take any chances, sending out “quite a few” officers to the scene, including patrol cars, according to the spokesperson.

“We arrived at the address given to us and waited outside the building. Twenty or 30 minutes later we entered the building, went up the stairs and knocked on the door to the apartment where the man had been seen.”

But instead of finding terrorized residents fearing for their lives they found a baffled-looking couple with a small child.

“It turned out it was a young child with a toy gun and a bow and arrow,” the spokesperson said.

“Shortly after we found out it was a child we left the scene. The last patrol car left just before 2am.”

This isn't the first time a small child has sparked a police alert in Sweden.

Back in June The Local reported how a two-year-old in Stockholm was mistaken for a burglar's loot, while a neighbour thought his businessman father was a robber, because he had grown a beard while on paternity leave.

READ MORE: Swedish toddler's ride in bag sparks police hunt

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