Source: CNN

A quarrel between occupants of two vehicles at a McDonald’s restaurant drive-through in southern Finland erupted in gunfire Tuesday, leaving three men dead, police said.

Three occupants in one of the vehicles have been arrested, said Peter Fagerholm, a detective inspector in the town of Porvoo.

The two vehicles were in line at the restaurant about 2 a.m. when the quarrel began, Fagerholm said. Shots from a semiautomatic handgun were fired from a Toyota SUV into a convertible driven by a pregnant woman and carrying four men.


Helsinki Murder at McDonald'sSource: Helsinki Times

Two people died and a third was seriously wounded in a shooting in a McDonald’s restaurant carpark in Porvoo in southern Finland early on Tuesday.

The police said three people had been taken into custody, including the suspected shooter.

Hannu Nurmi, the franchisee of the restaurant, told the Finnish News Agency (STT) that an argument appeared to have broken out between customers before the shooting, with a few motorists waiting to be served in the drive-through lane.

Nurmi added that none of the restaurant workers had been wounded in the shooting.
He said the police were sifting through the restaurant’s closed-circuit television footage.

Located about 1.5 kilometres southwest of central Porvoo, the McDonald’s restaurant where the shooting took place is open 24 hours a day.


Source: The Herald Sun

A gunman allegedly shot dead three people after a drunken argument in the queue at a McDonald’s all-night drive-through in Finland turned deadly, police say.

Police overnight were called to the burger bar in Porvoo, just north of Helsinki, at around 2 am local time after shots were fired.

A man was arrested after fleeing the scene, they said.

“What we know is that there were three cars in a row waiting to be served at the McDonald’s hamburger restaurant,” investigator Peter Fagerholm of the local police in Porvoo said.

“They started to argue, and started a little to fight and that led to the shooting… One of the people involved took out a handgun and shot these three people,” he said.

Two men in an open convertible were killed on the spot while a third man who was in the same car died of his injuries in hospital.

“There were two people shot in the head and one in the chest at very close range,” Mr Fagerholm said.

A pregnant woman and her boyfriend were also in the car but had escaped unharmed.

It remained unclear what had set off the row, he said.

“It appears it was basically an argument between drunk people. Nothing serious … Nobody could have expected that one of them would take a handgun out and start shooting these people,” he said, adding that the shooter and victims had not known each other.

“It is unbelievable that these people were just going for a hamburger and … now we have three people dead,” he said.

Police later arrested a man, born in 1969, who was suspected of being the shooter.

When he was pulled over on the motorway, the man, who was intoxicated and had recently been released on parole from a life sentence for murder, had the murder weapon with him in his Toyota 4WD, Mr Fagerholm said.

“It was a semi-automatic handgun, and we know now it was an illegal handgun,” he said.

Police also arrested another man and a women who were in the man’s car, but there was no doubt who the shooter was, according to Fagerholm.

“We know for sure who the perpetrator was,” he said.

Finland has one of the world’s highest per capita gun ownership rates.

The government in June rejected a full ban on semi-automatic weapons, rejecting an inquiry commission proposal following shootings at two schools in 2007 and 2008 that left a total of 20 people including the killers dead.

A killing spree at a shopping mall near Helsinki last New Year’s Eve in which six people died including the killer reignited the debate.


Added October 13, 2010 (Tip provided by Steinbach)