Officers arrived at the scene 23 seconds after the first emergency call from Kraków's main square, where the suspect was shooting at random from his car.
Two Polish police officers have been praised as heroes after they pursued and detained the gunman who killed six people and injured 17 in Kraków on Saturday. According to The Guardian, both officers were wounded in the confrontation and both were brought out of medically induced comas on Sunday, Polskie Radio 24 reported.
One of them, Jakub Kulik, a former paratrooper and volunteer firefighter, was hit by three bullets during a close-range exchange of fire with the suspect and underwent surgery on Saturday. The other, Artur Morański, was shot in the chest area and also underwent surgery. Both are under 30, according to the Polish news network TVP World. A national appeal for blood donors has been issued.
The speed of the police response is central to the account. Officers arrived at the scene 23 seconds after the first emergency call from Kraków's main square, where the suspect was shooting at random from his car. Footage that emerged on Sunday showed the two officers exchanging fire with the gunman; one of them then apprehended the suspect on the ground before firing his own weapon several times, and then fell, apparently injured himself.
Poland's prime minister, Donald Tusk, said on Saturday in a post on X that the officers "probably saved many human lives, disregarding the risk to their own". The justice minister, Waldemar Żurek, said their rapid response and heroism "prevented further human casualties". The suspect is a 24-year-old Polish national, and the attack is believed to have been inspired by far-right ideologies, according to the report.
The human details have travelled beyond the capital. Kulik is from the southern city of Bielsko-Biala and is a member of its volunteer fire service; a volunteer firefighter from the city's Leszczyny district told the local news website Bielsko.biala.pl that the service was very proud of him and that he responds to emergencies "just like we do". Morański is from Powroźnik, a village about 150km south-east of Kraków and close to the border with Slovakia, where a mass was held for him at the local church on Sunday, TVP World reported.
Much about the attack remains unconfirmed. The report does not set out the suspect's identity, the precise sequence of the shooting, or the basis for the assessment that far-right ideologies inspired it, and no full account of the investigation has yet been given. What is documented is the interval between the first call and the police arrival, and the cost to the two officers who closed it. Their recovery, and the investigation into the motives behind the attack, will shape how Poland reckons with what happened in its main square.
